


Mayday, Magpie

by thepartyresponsible



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Canonical Character Death, Drug Use, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up Together, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Protective May Parker (Spider-Man), Slow Burn, Tony-centric, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18319670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: Ben used to tell her it was a good world with good people. May wishes all those good people had taken better care of Ben. She wishes they’d taken better care of Tony, too.(2019 Tony Stark Bingo K4 - May Parker)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So about....eight? months ago, [mythaeology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythaeology/pseuds/Mythaeology) and I had a conversation about an imaginary AU where May goes to MIT with Tony and Rhodey. As that fic still has not magically manifested itself, here I am, doing my best. 
> 
> Also, fair warning, when I say _slow burn_ , please understand we're going from MIT days to possibly post-Endgame. Glaciers move faster than these idiots.
> 
> This is my first entry into the 2019 Tony Stark Bingo challenge, for the K4: May Parker square.

                May is not the first woman in her family to go to college. Aunt Kate has an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia, and she’s the reason May knows college is even an option. Other than Kate, only a handful of May’s uncles and great uncles have degrees. Some of the women in her family never even finished high school.

                As a child, Aunt Kate is everything May wants to be. Fearless and loud, just on the edge of _too much_ , jaw locked and smile crooked, always a little beleaguered. She has a way of watching strangers like she’s one careless comment away from laughing out loud, like she’s ready to set her shoulder against the world and tilt it back on its axis if she needs to.

                May doesn’t have her aunt’s anger, but she likes to think she inherited some of her nerve.

                Growing up, there’s never any spare money. Her parents can’t afford to send May’s older brother to college even with his partial scholarship, so Richard packs up all his art books, sells all those supplies he worked for, and joins the Army, instead.

                May doesn’t need anyone to tell her there won’t be any money for her. She’s been balancing her parents’ accounts and the garage’s books since she was fourteen. She knows, before her father ever sits her down to tell her, that there just isn’t anything for her.

                “You know we’d send you if we could,” he says.  “But we can’t, May. I’m sorry. And we need you here.”

                May loves her parents. She does. They aren’t the kind of people that anyone’s ever going to read about. They’re never going to make it into any society column. They’re good people, though, and honest. She loves them.

                But she doesn’t want to be them.

                “You’re going to have to hire someone,” May tells her dad, when the acceptance letter from MIT arrives in the mail. She hasn’t told anyone she applied other than the teachers who wrote her letters. “I’m sorry, Dad. But I want to go. I _have_ to go.”

                She’ll regret some of it, later. She’ll regret leaving them alone. She’ll regret that she made their lives harder when all they’d ever done, her whole life, was try to make hers easier.

                But she’ll never regret going. She’ll never regret that she did it, all on her own.

 

\- - -

 

                The day before classes begin, May goes around with her schedule in hand and figures out her routes, but she still manages to be late to her first class. She rushes in out of breath, makes herself smile when every single head swivels in her direction.

                There are, she realizes, exactly three other women in this class.

                Well, she’d been outnumbered in Shop, too. And Physics. She was the only girl at her dad’s garage, and she’s the only one at the new one she’s working at part-time. She’s used to it. It’s fine.

                There aren’t many seats left, so she takes one next to what she assumes is the professor’s sick kid. He’s skinny and rumpled, spikey-haired and lanky like he’s midway through a growth spurt, and he’s slumped over his desk, head pillowed on his arms. He stays that way for the first half hour, occasionally making soft, sleepy noises that May does her best to ignore.

                “’s wrong,” the boy says, when the professor calls for a break. He lifts his head to look at her, and May blinks at his bloodshot eyes.

                “What’s wrong?” May asks. “You feeling okay? Want me to get your dad?”

                His expression turns sour, and he rolls his eyes at her. “Sure,” he says, “just hop on up to New York and tug on his coattails. Pull that skirt up a bit, and he might even talk to you.”

                “Wow,” May says, more startled than offended. “You’ve got a mouth, huh?”

                He snorts and rolls his eyes. “Hey,” he says, rooting through every one of his pockets until he finds his wallet, incongruously enough, tucked into his waistband. “Be a sweetheart and get me some coffee, yeah?”

                He holds two separate twenty dollar bills out to her. When she doesn’t take them, he drops them in her lap and puts his head back down on the desk. “Black,” he says. “Like, three espresso shots. Keep the change.”

                May stares at the money in her lap. She thinks about the bags of rolled oats and rice at home, side-by-side in her empty cupboard. She takes a breath, and grabs the cash. “Listen, you little shit,” she says, “if you ever talk to me like that again, I’m gonna feed you your money.”

                He rolls his head to the side and blinks up at her. He gives her a pinched, quizzical expression. “You want, like,” he pauses, presses his lips together. The calculation is obvious on his face. “More money?” he guesses, hopefully.

                She climbs to her feet, crumples the bills into a ball, and throws the ball at his head. “Go to hell,” she says and storms out.

                There’s a brief scattering of applause as she stomps her way toward the door, and May makes it a few steps out into the hallway before she starts to feel bad. The kid’s an asshole, but the whole world’s full of assholes, and May’s not going to make anything better by becoming one herself.

                _Move seats_ , she tells herself. _Just ignore him. He doesn’t care how **you** feel. Why should you care how he feels? _

                But that’s not the kind of reasoning that has ever worked for her.

                When she comes back to class, she sets a paper cup of plain coffee in front of the kid and refuses to make eye-contact while she stubbornly sips her way through her own. In her peripheral vision, she watches the kid’s pale hand creep over to curl around his cup, and then, ten minutes or so after the professor’s lecture starts up again, he actually sits up.

                He stays that way, one leg curled to his chest, an arm wrapped around it, and watches the professor with his chin on his knee. He takes absolutely no notes. He does, at one point, reach over and correct May’s.

                “Hands to yourself,” May snaps at him, a little louder than she intends.

                “Yikes,” the kid says, flinching back. “Sorry.”

                When the lecture’s over, May gathers up all of her things and puts them carefully into her bag. She has another class in half an hour. She figures she can get there early, write down all her project due dates in her planner, start figuring out which days she’ll have to take off work.

                “Hey,” the kid says, softly. She looks at him, scowling, and he grimaces. “Yeah, I know.” He gestures at himself. “Asshole. Let me pay you back for the coffee.”

                “Sure,” she says, shouldering her bag. “Pay me back by watching your mouth.”

                “Ouch,” the kid says, but there’s a weird look on his face, a kind of uneven, shaky smile, like her rudeness is the best thing that’s happened to him all day. “Look, sweethea---”

                “Yeah, I don’t know who taught you to talk to women like that,” May says, “but they did you a real disservice. My name’s May. Learn some manners or don’t sit next to me again.”

                “I was here first,” the kid points out. That smile’s just getting bigger. It makes him look younger, and would almost make him seem sweet, if his eyes weren’t sparking with so much amusement.

                “Then I guess you’ll be learning some manners,” May says. She grabs her empty coffee cup and turns to leave.

                “I’m Tony,” he calls at her back.

                She waves a dismissive hand his direction.

                “Bye, May!” he says. “See you Wednesday.”

 

\- - -

 

                He doesn’t show up to Wednesday’s class, but he’s there before she is on Friday. He sleeps through the first half of class again, head hidden under his jacket. There’s an empty Starbucks cup in front of him and a full one waiting on her desk for her. It’s something fancy with steamed milk and whipped cream and some kind of chocolatey syrup, and May drinks it too quickly because she can’t get over how good it tastes.

                During the break, she goes to the copying machine, copies her notes from Wednesday, and tucks them under Tony’s arm.

                “’s this?” Tony says, finally rousing. He stares at her notes and then looks up at her. His eyes, somehow, are even more bloodshot, and there are bruises under them now, like the only time he ever sleeps is in this class.

                “You missed Wednesday,” she says. “Thanks for the coffee.”

                “You’re sweet,” he mumbles, staring at her notes. “This is wrong,” he says, tapping his finger against something.

                “You’re an asshole,” she tells him.

                She’s not sure how smart he is. She’s not sure if it’s all bullshit. This is the fifth day of class, and she’s already sick of boys asking her if she gets it, if she needs help, if she wants to study after class. But Tony just blinks at her like he’s not sure if he should laugh or start a fight.

                All week, May’s been pushing back against the feeling that she doesn’t belong here. At this place, with these people. She’s smart, and she knows that; she’s not insecure about it. She’s as smart as anyone she’s met so far. But she didn’t have the kind of education that most of these kids had, and she’s already having trouble finding her way through this system.

                She can do this. She’s _going_ to do this. But it’s maybe not a terrible idea to stop rejecting every offer of help she gets.

                This kid, however rude, is at least a manageable size. And he brought her coffee when he didn’t have to. That’s redeemable.

                “How’s it wrong,” she says, biting off the words so much that it doesn’t even sound like a question.

                Tony grins and leans over his copy of her notes, starts making all kinds of marks in the margins. “I can show you,” he says. “The professor got it wrong, not you. Well, you did too, cuz you copied him. Stop doing that. Think for yourself. Here. This is better.”

                He slides the page back over to her, and she stares at it, silently, thinking her way through it.

                After a solid sixty seconds of thought, she sighs. When she looks up, Tony’s watching her carefully, chin lifted, like he thinks she’s going to throw the notes in his face the way she threw his money.

                “I’ve got a thirty-minute break after this class.” She drops the notes to the desk, taps her finger against his writing. “Want to explain how you got this?”

                “Sure,” he says. His shoulders relax, and he smiles again, and May wonders how the hell old he is, and why someone’s letting this kid roam free-range around a college campus without appropriate supervision. “We’ll get more coffee.”

                “We’ll get water,” she tells him. “You look like death.”

                “Ugh, God.” Tony makes an elaborately disgruntled face. “Water is useless.”

                “Like, a half-gallon of it,” May says, sizing him up. “We’ve got a lot of toxins to flush. I can smell them from here.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony, she soon realizes, is an actual, literal, honest-to-God genius. He is also, she realizes pretty quickly after that, a damn idiot.

                “No,” she tells him, once, when they’ve broken into another lab after hours, and he’s writing on the chalkboard. “No, nope. You’ll blow yourself up.”

                “Yeah, _maybe_ ,” he says. He’s jittery from caffeine and too many thoughts, and she shoves a granola bar into his shaking hand. “Or _maybe_ I’ll revolutionize the field of aerospace.”

                “Both,” she tells him, squinting at his equations. “You’re going to do both. We’ll scatter your ashes among the stars. It’ll be very poetic. But I’d actually really prefer that you live long enough to _use_ some of that potential.”    

                He goes still and stares at her. “May,” he says, soft and stunned, almost breathless, “Mayday, Magpie, Maypole. That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

                From what May’s learned about Tony’s life, that very well might be true. She salutes him with her mug of tea, gone cold hours ago. “Eat that granola bar,” she says. “Or I’m taking away your chalk.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony’s here for physics and electrical engineering, and he casts playfully dark aspersions on what he calls May’s _primal obsession with meat magic_.

                “I’m serious, Magpie,” he says, when he’s been crashed out on her couch for half an hour, trying to wheedle her into going out instead of staying in to catch up on her reading. “Bioengineering is the ickiest engineering. All those slimy bodily fluids. And you don’t want to end up working with _medical_ _doctors_. They’re a pack of high-strung alarmists. Real buzzkills, I mean it.”

                May looks up from her fourth page of notes. She has never – not once – seen Tony take notes. Every time he asks to borrow paper in class, he ends up sketching out schematics or drawing elaborate renderings of stick figures murdering themselves in increasingly unlikely ways.

                “Tony,” she says, “we’re never gonna Frankenstein our way to true science infamy if I don’t figure out the biological side of the equation.”

                He freezes for a second, blinking over at her. He’s hanging off the couch, legs thrown over the back, hair almost brushing her floor. “Oh shit,” he says, after a moment. “Oh shit, you’re absolutely right.”

                May nods and returns to her work. In an hour or so, she’ll take a break. If Tony’s still here, she’ll feed him. He’ll usually eat what she puts in front of him, provided she distracts him with questions about theoretical physics until his plate is empty.

                “I’m just saying,” Tony says, a few minutes later. He’s curled up now, head propped on the arm of the couch, eyes closed.

                If she gets him to sleep _and_ eat tonight, she’ll buy herself celebratory doughnuts in the morning.

                “I’m just saying,” Tony repeats again, a little slurred now. “The one time my dad messed around with meat science, it ruined his whole life.”

                They never talk about Tony’s family. The first three weeks they knew each other, he tried to keep his last name a secret. It maybe would’ve worked, if he didn’t have that unfortunate habit of getting drunk and throwing his credit card at anyone holding food.

                She doesn’t know Howard Stark, but, from what she’s seen on TV and in the newspapers, he doesn’t look or act like a man whose life has been ruined. He looks, in her opinion, like a man who’s having too much of a good time.

                “Well,” she says, soft enough to be a murmur, just in case he’s actually asleep. “There’s not a lot your dad and I have in common, Tony.”

                “I know,” he says. His face is smushed into the upholstery, but he’s angled just enough in her direction for her to see the smile – sweet and happy, affectionate – blooming across his face.

 

\- - -

 

                She meets Howard Stark on the last day of the fall term. She takes her last final in the morning, and Tony finishes up around noon, and they’re having a picnic on the floor of his horrifying dorm room, watching Christmas movies on his TV and splitting a bottle of champagne.

                “It’s not really _splitting_ ,” Tony tells her, mock-aggrieved, “if you drink the whole thing.”

                “I let you have a glass,” she tells him, patting him consolingly on the shoulder. “You can have more when they let you vote, champ.”

                Tony subsides, grumbling, but May can tell he’s charmed. He’s always charmed when she cuts him off, like he thinks it’s adorable. Like she’s the first person to come along and tell him _no_ for his own good.

                The Whos down in Whoville are just bursting into song when the door springs open. May blinks up at the impatient face of Howard Stark, who looks between the two of them with raised eyebrows.

                “Tony,” he says, “let’s go.”

                “Jesus,” Tony says, climbing to his feet. “When did you get here?”

                “Your mother’s waiting.” Howard steps into the room, and May’s acutely aware of the fact that she’s sitting on the floor of his son’s dorm room with a bottle of champagne that neither one of them is old enough to legally acquire, wearing her work jeans and a t-shirt that’s stained down the front with motor oil.

                Well, she had no idea she was going to meet a billionaire today. Her plan was to get tipsy and try to cheer Tony up before he went home.

                “I’m, uh.” May stands slowly, red plastic cup of champagne still in hand. “I’m gonna go?”

                Howard considers her, sizing her up with a focus that’s eerily similar to the way Tony stares at the contraptions in the robotics lab. He looks like he’s breaking her into component parts and analyzing how to fit her back together in a better, flashier way.

                “Tony,” he says, “are you going to introduce your girlfriend?”

                “Her name’s May, and she’s not my girlfriend.” There’s an edge to Tony’s voice. “She’s dating a Russian hockey player. His name’s Kolya, and the last time someone shook her hand, he broke the guy’s whole arm off.”

                “Well,” Howard says, with a smile that’s so charming it would’ve worked if she didn’t already hate him for the way Tony’s eyes have been dark and irritated since he walked in. “I can see why she’d be worth the risk.”

                “Yikes,” May says, decisively, and swigs more champagne. “I gotta go.”

                “Merry Christmas, May,” Tony says, herding her around his dad. He keeps his underfed and over-caffeinated body positioned between the two of them the whole time.

                “Merry Christmas, Tony,” May says, and she’d hug him and fluff his hair up in every feasible direction, but Howard’s standing right there, watching with amused interest, and she has a fictional Russian hockey-playing boyfriend with a jealousy problem to get back to.

                She settles for making a face at Tony over Howard’s shoulder, mouth and eyes screwing up in a hideous retching motion. Tony beams at her like she blew him a kiss.

 

\- - -

 

                Back home, everyone in the neighborhood knows who May is. They know her older brother, and her father, and her uncles. All her high school boyfriends knew who’d be standing on their doorstep in the morning if they didn’t respect her the night before, and they knew they’d have a tough time denying it past the split lip she’d give them with her own fist.

                At MIT, she’s just another pretty brunette. Her reputation takes a while to develop.

                It doesn’t help that Tony keeps taking her out. “C’mon, May,” he says, tugging at her hands, “let’s go. It’s Friday night. Let’s _go_.”

                May should put a stop to it. Tony is two years younger than her. He’s sixteen; he’s legally a _child_. And every time she goes out with him, he gets so drunk that she has to half-carry him home, arm around his waist, doggedly promising herself that she can sleep forever as soon as she gets his dumb ass home.

                Sometimes she wakes up on his couch, and sometimes she wakes up with him on the floor beside her bed, wearing her pajamas, and she should _stop_ this, but her classes are hard, and the strained phone calls home are hard, and it’s fun, going to parties with Tony. It’s fun, for a while, to just be another anonymous girl, throwing back cheap beer with all the others.

                And the nights she stays in are worse, because Tony still tends to show up at her door, but it’s five o’clock instead of three, and he’s so drunk that he forgets to knock sometimes. Just passes out in the hallway of her cheap apartment building and groans when she hits him with the door in the morning.

                So she goes, and it’s fun. It’s _fine_. Until the night she looks up from an improvised dance floor at a frat house and realizes that Tony’s missing.

                She pulls herself away from the boy – boys? – she was dancing with, shoving aside hands as she totters her way to freedom. She shouldn’t drink the beer so quickly, but it’s absolutely terrible, and she only gets through it by drinking it as quickly as possible.

                Besides, it’s efficient. It’s not like she drinks it for the taste anyway.

                “You see Tony?” she asks a blonde girl on the outskirts of the group. The girl furrows her brow, looks surprised and a bit concerned, and May holds her hand up, indicating Tony’s approximate height. “The kid? Boy genius?” She gets nothing, so she tries one more time. “Tony _Stark_?”

                “Oh,” the blonde says, and jerks her chin that way, “he’s outside. With Derrick.”

                The way she says _Derrick_ sets off alarms in May’s head. It sure as hell doesn’t sound like a character endorsement.

                May nods her thanks and sets off. She’s just drunk enough that it’s a challenge, walking in her heels, and she’d take them off, but she has an unsettling idea in her head that she might need them. She has an interesting thought that force applied over a smaller surface area will be magnified, and she could maybe use a good kick to shatter someone’s kneecap.

                She makes it outside, looks around, and then sees Tony backed up against a wall with some giant frat boy bracketing him in, looking about five seconds away from trying to kiss Tony’s dumb, adorable, sixteen-year-old face.

                “Oh,” she says, “like _hell_.”

                She forgets her whole plan about kicking. She reaches down, hooks her heel off her foot, and flips it through the air, smacking the frat boy in the shoulder.

                “What the _fuck_.” He pulls back, wheeling her direction, and her next shoe hits him directly in the face.

                She wobbles, thrown by the new challenge of balancing in her bare feet, and points at him accusingly. “Back the fuck off,” she tells him, as loud as she can. “He’s a minor.”

                “You threw your _shoes_ at me,” he yells back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

                “I’ll throw a few fists at you, too.” May folds her fingers into her palms like her brother taught her. “Just come over here, asshole. I’ll throw ‘em right in your face.”

                The frat boy stares at her, mouth open, for one beat, then another, and then his face darkens. He steps away from Tony and starts her way. “All right, bitch,” he says. “You wanna fight about this?”

                “Yep,” May says, although her belly’s twisting up, taking shelter in her ribs. She feels like she wants to laugh, but also like she wants to run away. She squares off, chin ducked, tries to remember her brother’s lessons. “Let’s fight about it, asshole.”

                He gets closer and closer, seeming somehow to get bigger and bigger with every step he takes. Behind him, she can see Tony sorting himself out, shaking his head and then looking at her, bug-eyed. Tony starts her way, and she thinks they can absolutely handle this as a team, just pincer-maneuver this bastard into submission, but she’s probably going to have to take a few hits in the process

                And then, like an avenging angel, like a rescuing knight, like her own personal Batman, a man side-steps in front of her and lands a single solid punch to the frat boy’s face. The frat boy topples over immediately, knocked right the hell out, and May’s so Goddamn relieved that she almost kisses the new arrival.

                “I could kiss you,” she says, because adrenaline and alcohol is a heady mix.

                He blinks at her, dark eyes concerned. “Are you okay? What was that about? You know this guy?”

                “I could _kiss_ you,” May repeats, dazed.

                “Get in line,” Tony says.

                “I am the line,” May says. “Forms behind me, scout. Fall in.”

                The man stares at them. “Look,” he says, after a moment, “I gotta get out of here. That guy looks like he’s got good lawyers. You want me to walk you two to your car?”

                “You can walk me all the way home,” Tony says, beaming up at him from over May’s shoulder.

                “Don’t worry about the lawyers,” May says. “This drunk idiot behind me has amazing lawyers. The _best_ ones. Tony, tell him about the time in the Smithsonian.”

                “So we broke in,” Tony says, launching right into the story, “for _research purposes_. Barely even touched the exhibits. Just kinda crawled on ‘em a little. And so then the guards got all hysterical and--”

                “Tony,” the man says. “Tony _Stark_?”

                “Oh,” Tony waves a hand, dismissively. “Yeah. That’s me. Why, you want a job?”

                “No,” he says, “I want to talk to you about the shit you’ve been writing on the chalkboards.”

                His face lights up, and May thought he was beautiful when he threw the punch, but he’s stunning now, sharp and focused and _interested_ when he turns his eyes on May. “Have you been helping him? Are you the other handwriting? I gotta erase that shit every morning. Some idiot’s going to blow themselves up trying to steal your ideas. _You’re_ gonna blow yourselves up. You need to reconfigure your propellant tanks if you want that thing to make it through launch without obliterating everyone on site.”  

                May can _feel_ Tony’s jaw drop, thudding against her shoulder. She doesn’t blame him.

                “ _And_ ,” he says, when they just stare at him, “impact speed of Mach 10? C’mon, you don’t need a warhead. That’s overkill. That’s heavy, expensive overkill. At speeds like that, just load it with tungsten rods. Hell, use concrete. Cheaper, safer, _lighter._ Lower risk of collateral damage.”

                “Forget walking me home,” Tony says, looking starstruck, sounding stunned. “Walk me down the aisle, handsome. Walk me _anywhere_.”

                “Walk us to the aerospace labs,” May says, reaching out her hand. “Let’s go right now.”

                “I’ve got your shoes,” Tony tells her, because he’s good, and faithful, and the best friend she’s ever had. “Come on,” he says, when the man hesitates. He smiles the smile with too many teeth. It’s May’s favorite, because it’s the only one that’s real. “Come be a genius with us. It’s _fun_.”

                He hesitates for a second longer and then reaches out and takes May’s offered hand. “I’m James,” he tells them. “James Rhodes.”

                “ _Rhodey_ ,” Tony says, hooking his arm through James’ free one. “That’s May. Let’s go be geniuses.”


	2. Chapter 2

                May’s brother gets married in early April, and he changes her RSVP from single to plus one. “Don’t bullshit me, May,” he says, when he calls her. “God knows there’s always someone. Bring him. I want to meet him.”

                May makes an irritated noise into the phone. “I am offended,” she says, “by the insinuation that I am not one hundred percent devoted to my studies.”

                “Bring him,” Richard says. “Or bring a friend. It’ll be boring for you if you don’t.”

                May asks Tony first, because Rhodey’s still a relatively new arrival, but he bows out almost instantly. “Oh, no, sorry, May,” he says, looking genuinely apologetic. “I don’t go to people’s weddings. Not unless they’re—it’s just. It’s distracting, sometimes. When I show up.”

                May hadn’t even thought about what might happen if she brought _Tony Stark_ to her brother’s wedding, how it could wrench the attention away from the bride and groom. She doesn’t think of Tony as _Tony Stark_ very often. It’s easier, for both of them, if she doesn’t.

                When she asks Rhodey, he looks startled and then pleased. “Weddings,” he says, with a happy nod. “Champagne, free food. Dancing. Your family? Yeah, I’m in.”

                Tony takes them shopping for it, probably because he thinks he needs to make up for turning May down by throwing money at her. She doesn’t let him buy her a dress, but he goes to such elaborate efforts to purchase and smuggle out a pair of earrings she admired that she can’t make him return them afterward.

                Rhodey says he already has a suit, but he doesn’t let either one of them see it until the day of.

                Tony traveled up for the wedding, but he’s not attending; he’s just lurking around in the breathtakingly fancy hotel suite he says was free for him because of some arrangement the hotel has with his dad. Every time May walks through the lobby to visit them, she feels like some perfectly pressed hotel worker is going to grab her with a shepherd’s hook and throw her into the garbage. Tony, for his part, lounges across the furniture with a level of disrespect he never directs toward her own secondhand collection.

                On the day of the wedding, Tony and May are perched on some ridiculous chaise lounge, May in a cheerful spring dress and Tony in ripped jeans and an AC/DC t-shirt, when Rhodey finally emerges from the bedroom in his suit.

                Tony catcalls him so loudly and so creatively that _May_ blushes. Or maybe she was already blushing. It’s hard to call, really.

                “Okay, heartbreakers,” Tony says, seeing them off at the door, adjusting Rhodey’s tie and smoothing May’s hair, “try not to make everyone fall in love with you. Rhodey, this is someone else’s wedding. May, you’re related to half these people.”

                “Oh my God,” May says, flustered and laughing. “Tony, stop it.”

                “ _You_ stop it,” Tony says, beaming at them. “No one asked you to be this beautiful. Get out of here. Go have fun.”

                May hooks her arm through Rhodey’s and grins at Tony one last time, and then they head off to the wedding, where Rhodey charms everyone who speaks to him, and May very magnanimously doesn’t mention it when Richard cries (twice!) during the ceremony, and the two of them run interference all night to keep Richard and his new wife, Mary, on the dancefloor and away from all the tipsy relatives who want to ruin a good wedding with gossip.

                “He’s a nice guy, May,” Richard says, when they’re hugging goodbye at the end of the night. “Don’t let him join the Air Force. He belongs with the real grownups in the Army.”

                May laughs and leans up to kiss Richard’s cheek. “He’s not going to join the Air Force,” she says. “We’re all gonna stick together. We’re gonna save the world.”

                Richard blinks and then smiles at her, something almost sad in his eyes in the split second before he looks up and sees Mary and then he’s just nauseatingly lovesick all over again.

                “Ugh, _newlyweds_ ,” May says, shoving her brother toward his wife.

                “Revolting,” Rhodey agrees, but he’s grinning like they’re the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

 

\- - -

 

                After the end of the spring term, they spend their last full day together on Revere Beach. It’s clear-skyed and crowded, and May has to tackle Tony to the sand to convince him to put sunscreen on his rapidly reddening nose. She’s exhausted; they’re all exhausted. But it’s the warm, honest exhaustion of hard work done well enough, and they fall asleep in the afternoon sun, sprawled out beside each other on borrowed towels.

                They take the subway back, May and Rhodey bracketing Tony, and Tony sleeps the whole way, head propped first on May’s shoulder and then Rhodey’s chest. He’s sunburned despite all of May’s efforts, and she feels conflicted as she looks him over. He’s too big for his skin, too loud for his own good, and she doesn’t know who’s going to look after him this summer.

                She worries no one will.

                “Take care of yourself,” she instructs, as solemnly as she can, after Tony and Rhodey have helped load her car the next morning. “I mean it. I’m deputizing you, Tony. You are now officially your own guardian.”

                Tony salutes her, sloppy and showy and careless. “Thanks, coach. Means a lot.”

                May pushes his hair off his face and kisses his cheek. “If you get into any trouble, you _call me_.” She hesitates, eyes going briefly to Rhodey. “Unless you need bail money, because then Jim--”

                “Oh, hell no,” Rhodey says, shaking his head. “I am beyond broke. If Tony gets locked up, we’re just gonna have to break him out.”

                “Okay,” May says. Because, sure. Because she’s known this bright, brilliant disaster for ten months, and she thinks she’d probably commit about three dozen felonies to keep him safe. “Okay, Tony, we’ll break you out.”

                Tony snorts, but some of the anxious tension sparking in the back of his eyes seems to calm. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I love you guys, too.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony calls her almost every day. Her father – appalled but ever-practical – buys a cordless phone for the shop, so May can work with it shoved between her cheek and shoulder, humming along while Tony pours words into her ear.

                Rhodey calls, too. Once a week, every Sunday evening. When she gets a call from him during work hours on a Thursday, she knows something’s wrong.

                “What?” she says, stomach twisting up. And then, in response to her cousin Ollie’s flummoxed expression, “Sorry. Hey, Rhodey. How’re you?”

                “You talked to Tones today?” Rhodey asks. He sounds harried. She can hear the clatter and bang of a busy restaurant behind him, which means he’s calling from work.

                “No,” she says. She pauses, sets down the gasket scraper in her hand. “Why?”

                Rhodey sighs. “Do me a favor? Give him a call. He had—well, his dad’s a real peach, you know?”

                “Sure,” May says. She knows.

                When she calls Tony, his brain spins theories like an open wound. She can’t always handle the leaps Tony manages with ease, but this time he doesn’t even make _sense_. She thinks, with growing unease, that he’s not making sense because he might actually be wrong.

                “Tony,” she says, “stop. Stop it.”

                She’s pacing in front of the shop, ignoring the increasingly put-upon looks from her father and uncle and cousins. The cordless phone is at the very edge of its range, and it’s beeping a low-battery signal in her ear, and Tony won’t _stop_.

                She doesn’t know. Rhodey might. But she thinks, if Tony starts tinkering around with the project he’s talking her through, he might legitimately blow himself up.

                “It’ll _work_ ,” Tony says. There’s a loud, ringing crash, and then he breathes out. It sounds jagged, like maybe he’s about to scream. Or cry.

                “Just come down here,” May says, impulsively. Manhattan isn’t that far from Queens, and, last she heard, the Starks were in New York. “Show me the designs, Tony. We can talk about it. Just come down here.”

                Tony’s silent. For a long moment, she thinks he’ll say no. Tony’s not proud the way she expected him to be. That rich boy arrogance is a defense mechanism, and it only runs skin deep. But he has a prickly, armored pride about his work and his ideas that she thinks was built up like a callous, created in response to someone trying to wear it down.

                “Okay,” he says, finally. “Okay, Magpie, I’ll come by.”

 

\- - -

 

                He shows up at the shop an hour and a half later, with a backpack over his shoulder and a smile she hasn’t seen since he came back from winter break. “Mayday!” he calls, genuinely jubilant, and he picks her up when she crashes into him, spins her around in a tight circle. “Damn, that’s a good look for you.”

                “Shut up,” she says, tugging at the color of her hideous but well-loved Parker Automotive shirt. “It’s a uniform.”

                “Who the hell is this, May?” Her cousin Leo is doing his whole intimidation routine, with his arms crossed over his chest to upgrade his biceps from “pronounced” to “legitimately alarming” and his voice lowered at least half an octave, but he looks surprised and then remorseful when he gets a full look at Tony’s baby face.

                “This is my friend Tony,” May tells him, as Leo drops his scowl. “We go to MIT together.”

                “Oh, no shit?” Leo hesitates, eyes squinting with thought, mouth quirking up with a question he’s just _barely_ too polite to ask.

                “He’s a genius, Leo,” she says. “A prodigy.”

                “Is the prodigy gonna help you with that transmission flush you’re supposed to be working on?” Leo’s dad appears over his shoulder, looking beleaguered and unimpressed, the way he always does at the end of a long day.

                “Sure,” Tony says, perking up immediately. He glances at May and then hesitates. “I mean. If that’s fine. Or I can come back— I saw a deli up the block. I could--”

                “Yeah.” May jerks her chin at her uncle, squares her shoulders. Uncle Tommy’s not so bad, but sometimes he needs a little bullying to be convinced to act right. “He’s gonna help. Get him a shirt.”

                Leo and Uncle Tommy share a brief, dubious look, but then Leo ducks into the office to fish out a spare shirt for Tony. When he hands it over, May realizes it’s one of hers. She’s the only one in the shop who’s ever needed a small, and her dad had to special order a set of them for her back in high school.

                Tony shrugs into it immediately, buttons it up over his Metallica shirt, and then he drops his bag in a dusty, dirty corner and turns toward May, grinning like she’s given him the best present of his life. “Okay,” he says, “where’s this car?”

 

\- - -

 

                At dusk, when the shop’s closing, she and Tony walk to the diner up the street. She left her shirt at the shop, but Tony’s proudly wearing his, open and unbuttoned over his t-shirt.

                “This is what you do all day?” Tony has his arm thrown across her shoulders, and he’s practically glowing with soft, relaxed contentment. “You just get to hang around that place, shit-talking your family, fixing cars?”

                “It’s work, Tony.” May’s not _quite_ rolling her eyes at him. It’s not Tony’s fault he’s never had a job before. The longer she thinks about it, the sadder it is that Tony doesn’t know the well-worn camaraderie of people who’ve worked together for years.

                Tony snorts like he doesn’t believe it’s work, or maybe like he has a different definition. When they’re settled into May’s usual booth, he reaches into his backpack to get his notes, and May realizes the bag’s full of clothes.

                “You’re not going home tonight?” she asks.

                Tony stares down at his backpack for a second and then shrugs, stretches his neck to shake off the tension that settled over him. “Probably not.”

                May fidgets with her straw, tries to strategize a fruitful way forward. “You parents won’t worry?”

                He laughs, sharp and bitter. “Jesus, May,” he says, slouching back against the booth. “They probably won’t even notice.”

                Tony is exhausting, sometimes. May knows that. May knows that _very well_. Tony is rising waters that never go still. May’s been stacking sandbags since she met him, trying to keep Tony from breaking his levees and spilling out until he’s got nothing left.

                Knowing Tony can be exhausting and overwhelming and frustrating, and it has never, not once, come close to not being worth it. Tony gives _so much_. Tony would give her anything she asked for.

                She can’t go twelve hours without wondering if Tony’s okay, and, at that moment, looking at Tony slumped dejectedly across the table in his borrowed Parker Automotive shirt, she can’t understand or forgive anyone who’d claim to love Tony and then fail to look after him.

                “Great,” she says, fake-bright, using that tone her brother says has its very own teeth, “then I guess you’re staying with me.”

 

\- - -

 

                May drops Tony’s backpack onto Richard’s old bed, and her dad looks deeply annoyed by this whole process, but Tony’s down in the kitchen, effortlessly charming her mother, and her dad’s smart enough to know when he’s been outmaneuvered.

                “If I catch him,” her dad says, “sneaking into your room--”

                “ _Dad_ ,” May says. “He’s a friend who needs a place to sleep.”

                Her dad narrows his eyes. “His parents kick him out?”

                “No.” It’s not even a lie. They’d have to notice Tony was around before they could tell him to leave. “Look, it’s one night. He’s a good kid. You won’t even notice he’s here, I promise.”

                Her dad crosses his arms and sighs. “Fine. _One night_ , May. One night.”

                “That’s what I said,” May agrees. “One night.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony stays for two and a half weeks. After that first night, he stumbles his way down to the breakfast table and then follows May to work, borderline incoherent between all his yawns. They’re halfway to lunch before he seems to fully wake up, and, by then, May’s father and uncle have figured out how useful he can be.

                “You didn’t say he was _smart_ , May,” Uncle Tommy complains.

                May spares him a sidelong look. “MIT, Uncle Tommy. I said he’s my friend from _MIT_.”

                “Lots of smart kids are real fucking stupid,” Leo observes, with that particular mashup of genuine insight and unsophisticated vocabulary he’s been trotting out since he was approximately eight years old. “But don’t worry, kid,” he adds, nudging Tony with his shoulder. “You seem all right.”

                Tony, clutching his fourth cup of coffee, oil and grease starting to stain his fingers, looks up at Leo and beams like a light’s gone on inside him.

                May decides that what Tony needs – just for a while, just for a couple of days – is to be around people who aren’t complete assholes. Her family isn’t impressive on most metrics, but their love for each other is beyond the limits of any scale she knows. From what she’s gathered about Tony’s family, they maybe run in the opposite direction.

                That afternoon, when her dad is on lunch and is therefore at his most amiable, she barges into the office and says, “Tony should stay the weekend. Help us with the backlog. He can do the work.”

                Her dad blinks at her. “Christ, May,” he says, mustard on his chin, “what kinda trouble is he in?”

                “No trouble,” she says.

                Her dad snorts. “Yeah, sure, that out there— _that’s_ what ‘no trouble’ looks like. It looks like some teenaged kid hiding out in a shop in Queens.”

                May holds her hands out in front of her. “He’s not in trouble. Okay? Right now, he’s not in trouble. If he leaves, he’s not gonna go home. And if he doesn’t go home, I don’t know where he’ll end up.”

                She is being absolutely ruthless. But she knows how her dad is about strays. She once watched him block traffic on the Belt Parkway to save a panicked kitten.

                “ _Fine_ , May,” her dad says. He holds his sandwich up like it’ll ward her off. “Can I eat now?”

                “Thanks, Dad,” she says. She leans over and plants a kiss on the top of his balding head, and he grumbles and grouses, but he’s smiling when she leaves.

                After that, it’s easy to just keep extending Tony’s departure date. He and May stay up late some nights throwing theories back and forth, but mostly they’re tired out by the end of the day. Tony seems to like the routine. He never once misses a family meal, although he does pick up an annoying habit of offering to buy groceries.

                “You realize you’ve been working without pay for five days?” her dad asks, bewildered and offended. “No guest’s gonna buy _groceries_. Sit down.”

                “It’s not _work_ ,” Tony objects. “You guys just let me hang around the garage. And I’ve been eating your food for a week. C’mon, let me--”

                “You’re sweet,” May’s mother says, reaching over to pat him approvingly on the shoulder. “Now stop insulting us. And Jack, maybe you should pay him.”

                “Oh no,” Tony says. “You already give me free room and board. I’m overstaying my welcome. I’m not—you can’t _pay me_.”

                “ _Leo_ should pay him,” May says. “Since Tony’s been doing all his work while Leo’s been flirting with that girl down at the deli.”

                Tony turns a horrified look her direction. “May Parker,” he says, in a low, disapproving tone he must have learned from May’s mother, “her name is Grace, and they are _in love_ , and I am _rooting for them_. Bite your tongue.”

                May throws her hands up and despairs.

 

\- - -

 

                Tony settles into May’s family like a lost dog come home, constantly underfoot but too enthusiastic to be pushed away. He cooks with May’s mom, and listens with intent focus every time May’s dad or uncle tells him anything, and gambols around Leo like he’s always wanted to be a slightly annoying kid brother. On Sunday afternoons, when the whole family gets together for a massive dinner at May’s grandma’s place, he sits with May’s grandmother and gossips cheerfully in Italian for hours.

                When May asks, Tony says he learned Italian to impress his mother, which is a knife to the heart May doesn’t need, given how many of those Tony’s been accidentally handing those out since he arrived.

                It’s not that May never understood the value of her family. She _loves_ her family. She has always loved them, and they have always loved her. And the fights she’s had with them about MIT, about leaving, about not staying and working like Leo stayed and worked, she had with the understanding of a safety net. However far she fell, she was never going to be cut loose.

                Tony hovers around the edges of May’s family, a kid with his face pressed against glass he can’t break. It _hurts_.

                It seems to hurt everyone else, too. Her whole family is gentle with him, and they are not, on the whole, gentle people. _Good_ people, yes. But not always gentle.

                Two and a half weeks into Tony’s stay, Leo answers the shop phone with a casual, “Parker Automotive,” and then, three seconds later, bursts into dismissive laughter. “Yeah, fuck you, pal. _Sure_ you are.”

                He hangs up, rolling his eyes, but his hand hasn’t even left the phone before it starts to ring again. May looks up from the engine she’s buried in.

                “Oh, yes, hello,” Leo says, cooing into the phone in a high-pitched, British-accented voice, “It’s me, the Queen of England. How can I--”

                And May can _see it_ , when it happens. She watches Leo’s face fall from annoyance to surprise to sudden suspicion. His eyes dart to Tony.

                “Well, who the hell’s asking?” Leo says, and, God love him, he is doing his intimidation routine _at the phone_. May watches while Leo straightens up and scowls, ducks his head. “Don’t have anybody by that name here.”

                There’s a moment of silence while Leo listens to the reply, and then he huffs out a disbelieving breath. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “I’ll ask.” He turns away, facing toward the nearest wall, and then yells, “Hey, any of you fucks secretly named Tony?”

                Tony comes out from underneath the car he’s working on, looking wide-eyed and a little incredulous. “Uh,” he says.

                “That’s a solid set of nope’s all around, buddy,” Leo says. The back of his neck is turning red, and his tone is dipping toward dangerously angry. “So why don’t you--- oh yeah? Tell you what, asshole, you send your fucking goons around here, and they’re gonna come back missing teeth. Stay in Manhattan, you bougie piece of shit.”

                He hangs up with as much emphasis as he can manage with a cordless phone and then turns around toward the shop, scowling. There’s a stretched-out bit of silence where nobody says anything.

                “Damn, Leo,” Ollie says, giving his older brother a look of mild reproach, “we really gotta work on your phone etiquette.”

                “Fuck off, Ollie,” Leo says, perfunctory. He looks at Tony, mouth bullied into a flat line. “Hey, Tony,” he says, like an apology, “your dad’s looking for you.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony packs up that evening. It’s a whole production. May, her parents, her uncle Tommy, Ollie, Leo, and May’s grandmother are all crammed into the house, ostensibly helping Tony find all the things he’s left scattered around the house during his stay. Mostly, they’re all fishing for a story that May, and Tony, and even Leo are faithfully keeping to themselves.

                “I don’t know,” Leo says, when May’s mother angles for a name. “Just some asshole. Sounded fussy.”

                May can hear Leo’s voice through the walls. She’s in Richard’s old bedroom, helping Tony shove clothes into his backpack.

                “Aw, Nonna,” Leo says, sounding persecuted, “don’t ask me that. I’m telling you, I didn’t get a name.”

                “We gotta rescue your cousin,” Tony says. “They’re eating him alive.”

                Leo hasn’t been hassled like this since he managed to earn two speeding tickets within an hour of getting his driver’s license. “He’s fine,” May says. “He’s kinda tough, for a giant crybaby.”

                Tony laughs, smiling to himself. “Hey, you think he’d wanna be my PR person after I graduate? He’s holding that line like his firstborn’s behind it.”

                May cannot imagine a more ludicrous and endearing scenario than her 6’4 cousin with the arms of an Olympic wrestler and the vocabulary of a drunk sailor trying to lead Stark industries press releases.

                “Hey there, shitheads,” she says, in a decent approximation of Leo’s voice, “what we’ve got here is a new ICBM. This baby’ll blow up half the fucking world. Congratulations. You’re welcome. There will be no questions at this time.”

                Tony falls into half-suppressed snickers as he zips up his backpack and throws it over one shoulder. He’s still laughing a little when they make their way downstairs for all the goodbyes.

                May thinks he almost cries when her grandmother goes up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek and say something warm and encouraging in Italian. It’s just a brief look, something sad and longing.

                May figures that look is the reason her dad speaks up, when he’s waiting with May and Tony for Tony’s car. They’re standing outside in the fading twilight, and he’s staring squint-eyed across the street.

                “You know,” he says, “you could stay. I mean. If it’s that bad.”

                Tony looks up at him, eyes wide. For a split second, May can see how much he wants to. And then he shakes his head, trots out the PR smile he hasn’t used on May’s family since the day he arrived. “It’s not bad. Just boring. You guys let me use real grownup tools.”

                May’s dad snorts. “Yeah, don’t tell your dad,” he says.

                “Trust me,” Tony says, still smiling, “I try to tell my dad as little as possible.”

                May watches her father’s face seize for a second before settling into a neutral expression. “If the guy’s that much of an asshole, maybe it’s for the best.”

                “He’s not an asshole.” Tony shrugs, tugs at the straps of his backpack. “He’s busy, you know? He’s very smart.”

                May’s dad frowns, and May wraps her arm around Tony’s shoulders. A few minutes later, a Rolls Royce prowls into May’s neighborhood, and Tony sighs, eyes moving heavenward.

                “Subtle,” he says, “I asked for _subtle_.”

                Howard Stark’s in the driver’s seat. He parks the car right in front of the stoop, in a very clear no-parking zone, and climbs out to flash a charming grin. “May,” he says, like they’re old friends. “Nice of you to babysit Tony for a while. How’s that hockey player?”

                “You can’t park there,” May tells him. “There’s a fine.”

                Howard gives her a look that indicates he likes her a little too much to laugh in her pretty face. “Sounds terrible,” he says.

                “God,” Tony says, hefting his bags. “Just get the trunk, okay, Dad?”

                “It’s open,” Howard says. His eyes go to May’s father. There’s an interesting moment, where his gaze focuses and intensifies, and May glances over to realize her father is giving Howard Stark a look that would boil asphalt. “Hello,” Howard says, tone almost exploratory, “I’m Howa--”

                “You’re moving,” her dad says. He sounds a second away from spitting on the sidewalk. May is _delighted_. “Red line means fire zone.”

                Howard raises his eyebrows. He seems legitimately taken aback. He opens his mouth, but Tony makes a big production out of slamming the trunk and then yelling, “Let’s _go_ , Dad,” and Howard holds for just a second, staring at May’s father, before he folds neatly into the car, and then they’re gone.

                May stands silently, watching the car disappear. And then her dad exhales, long and heavy, and shoots her an exasperated look. “Coulda told me he was Tony _Stark_ , May. I woulda let him buy groceries.”

                May snorts and rolls her eyes. “You would not.”

                He rolls his eyes right back. And it’s not fair that a middle-aged man is better at it than she is, but maybe he’s had more occasion to practice. It’s not like she and Richard were the easiest kids to raise.

                They stand outside for a few minutes, staring in the direction Tony left. Finally, her father sighs. “Well,” he says, “if he comes back next summer, he can buy whatever he wants.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony washes up on the shores of MIT exactly ten hours before classes start. May and Rhodey converge to help him haul his trunk full of stuff into his new dorm room.

                “Cutting it a little close there, Tones?” Rhodey asks, as they navigate the dark parking lot, burdened with what May is reasonably certain is at least 85% tools or electronics parts and only about 5% clothes or food.

                “Lost track of time,” Tony says, with a shrug. He’s wearing his Parker Automotive shirt, which Rhodey is clearly very jealous of, and he doesn’t fill it out quite as well as he did earlier in the summer.

                He’s lost weight. Again.

                “Pancakes after this?” May asks, even though it’s almost midnight and she already spent most of the money she made this summer on books and supplies.

                “God, Mayday,” Tony says, sending her a worshipful look, “you always have the _best_ ideas.”


	3. Chapter 3

                Now that Tony’s seventeen years old and two inches taller, half the campus thinks they’re dating, all three of them. May’s scandalized at first and offended by the insinuation that she’d need to sleep with either of the boys to keep their interest, but then she realizes that it’s useful.

                There are people who would hurt Tony. Not always maliciously. Just because it’s so easy to hurt him. He makes it so easy for anyone who shows the slightest bit of interest.

                May can chase off most of the girls and some of the boys. But, sometimes, she has to call in reinforcements.

                “Rhodey,” she says, once, whispering it out of the side of her mouth as they watch a broad-shouldered blonde sweet-talk Tony, “go over there and pretend to get territorial.”

                “Aw, damn it,” Rhodey says, mouth twisting up. “Again?”

                “Hey,” May says, defensively, “I almost decked that redhead last week. It’s your turn. Besides, I already tried it on this guy, and it backfired. He was into it. He tried to hit on both of us.”

                “Both of you?” Rhodey repeats, gaze flicking between May and Tony. “Really? Guy’s got an ego, huh?”

                “Oh, absolutely,” May says. “He grabbed my ass.”

                “He grabbed your ass?” Rhodey’s eyes narrow pensively. He’s still acting reluctant, but he’s drinking his beer with unusual speed.

                May gauges the irritated disapproval settling into the edges of his mouth and goes for the killing blow. “Tony’s, too,” she says.

                “Yeah, alright.” Rhodey heaves an aggrieved sigh, crumples the beer can in his fist, and hands her his pool cue. “Win this for me, okay?”

                “You got it, Rhodey-bear,” she says, swinging to face the pool table. All around the table, the faces of the aerospace boys begin fall.

                “Hell, Rhodes,” one of them calls to Rhodey’s retreating back. “We didn’t sign up to play _her_.”

                “Yeah,” the other one agrees, “the bet’s over. I need that money for gas.”

                “Gentleman,” May says, sizing up the table, “it’s been a while since you bought me groceries.”

 

\- - -

 

                Rhodey makes things easier. It seems to be a function of who he is, an inevitable manifestation of his insight and empathy and practicality. If May’s the anchor that keeps Tony from thrashing loose in a storm, Rhodey’s the lighthouse that shows them a safe way home. May is naturally attuned to danger, worries more than maybe she should, but James has a knack for seeing the likely outcome of threats, and they’re safer and steadier, always, when he’s around.

                “We should go,” Rhodey says, in early December, when Tony’s passed out on his notes and the two of them have been quietly working through their reading for an hour. “To Malibu.”

                May feels her face screw up in distaste. She doesn’t _hate_ Tony’s parents, but she certainly doesn’t approve of them, and she has no interest in spending time with them.

                And she wants, more than anything, to go home. The competitive nature of higher education is one of the many things no one thought to warn her about. She’s tired of hoarded notes and backhanded compliments and library books with crucial pages cut out of them. She’s tired of boys who see her GPA as a challenge. She’s tired of people trying to put her back in her place, tired of the way her raised hand gets ignored.

                She wants to go _home_. She wants to spend as much time as possible in the company of people who never ask her to be better, smarter, colder.

                Rhodey makes a sympathetic grimace at the look on her face. “I know, but we should go, because I really think he expects us not to.”

                The thing about Tony is that he’s always willing to rip himself wide open and always shocked when anyone offers to help stitch him back together. He hands his heart around like a party favor, but the second someone treats his loyalty like it has value, he gets thrown right out of orbit.

                May taps her pencil against her textbook and studies the fan of Tony’s dark hair against his notes. “Have you met Howard?”

                Rhodey rolls his eyes, which is all the answer May needs. “Guy tried to pay me, you know? To spy on Tony.”

                Outsourcing parental supervision is exactly the kind of bullshit May expects from a man like Howard Stark. “Yeah,” she says, rubbing at her eyes, trying to soothe the dry ache that’s starting to feel permanent. “Sounds like him.”

                But they go, in the end. After their finals, they load into a car that takes them to an airport, and they fly to Malibu in a private jet, where nobody asks for ID and Tony celebrates takeoff with a round of tequila shots.

                Malibu is a bizarre experience. Howard and Maria welcome them with a kind of expertly charming, vaguely benevolent indifference, but May can’t complain about them as hosts because every possible need she has is deftly and efficiently seen to. She floats through her week, never seeing the housekeeping staff that fastidiously straightens every small mess she makes. Her sandy footprints disappear from decks; her neatly hung towels are replaced with fresher, cleaner copies as soon as she leaves the room.

                The food is amazing, but the Starks rarely show up for it. They eat with Maria twice and Howard three times, and at no point are all three of the Starks at the table together. The house feels impersonal and echoing, like an office building on a Saturday. The only place she can breathe out is her own room, and, even then, she feels monitored, like the house staff always knows exactly where she is and what she’s doing.

                Jarvis is a delight, but he’s the only thing about the whole mansion that feels anything like home.

                “Can you imagine growing up like this?” May asks, one morning, when she and Rhodey are curled up on the deck, watching the sunrise. They’re drinking the coffee that was set out for them and wearing Stark Industries hoodies that Howard gave them, along with pamphlets about SI’s Aeronautics and Bioengineering Divisions.

                Two days ago, Rhodey said something smart at dinner, and Howard rewarded him with a job offer. It’s exhausting. Last night, Howard quoted May’s own words back to her, and she doesn’t know if she should be flattered or appalled that he’s apparently pulled her essays from Thermodynamics of Biomolecular Systems. She thinks academic essays are meant to be private. She thinks, also, that the privacy of lesser people is not something Howard Stark cares much about.

                “It’s a job interview,” Rhodey says. He doesn’t look repulsed, the way she feels. She never knows what to do with Howard, can’t keep up with way he swerves from charming to measuring, the constant flick between _you should like me_ and _you should make me like you_. “Every day, every second. It’s a job interview.”

                “People have to be useful,” she says, “or they have no value.”

                She doesn’t know why she’s so emotional about it, except Howard seems like the worst parts of MIT encapsulated, all money and skill and the constant, hand-on-throat pressure to _impress me or go home_.

                 “He’s such an asshole,” she says. “He’s so—it’s like nobody ever told him intelligence is a skill, not a virtue.”

                Rhodey gives her a sidelong, assessing look. After a moment, he sighs and leans toward her, throws an arm around her shoulders. “You’re a sweetheart, May Parker,” he tells her. “But damn, I’d never want to piss you off.”

                In that moment, with the sun rising bright against the skyline, safe and sleepy with his arm around her, she can’t imagine that he ever would.

                But they are still so young then. And she hasn’t learned yet that loyalty can split you like a wishbone.

 

\- - -

 

                “Seriously, guys,” one of the firefighters says, after the building has been cleared. It’s mid-April, still too cold to be outside at 2am, and they’re huddled together, taking furious notes on Tony’s arms with May’s eyeliner, because they’d left all their lab supplies inside.

                “This is the fourth time this semester,” the man adds, and, under the sleepy burr in his voice, May thinks he sounds impressed.

                “Yeah,” Tony says, with a vague nod in his direction, “sorry. I’ll buy you guys a new--- what? A new truck? New pole? Pole dancing classes? Rhodey, what do firefighters like?”

                There’s a brief, tense silence. Rhodey and May exchange looks and then turn, in unison, toward the firefighter. It occurs to May that they might actually get expelled if they start a late-night brawl with a bunch of firefighters because Tony Stark implied they were strippers.

                “Pole dancing classes sound fine,” the firefighter says, with an agreeable shrug. “I guess we could all work on our core a bit more.”

                May blinks. “Sorry,” she says. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, with gentle brown eyes that remind her a little of the way Rhodey sometimes looks at Tony. “It’s just—we’re kind of working on this temperamental thing.”

                “Noticed that,” the man says, nodding. “Last semester, we were only out here twice for you guys. Figured it was something new.”

                “To be fair,” Tony adds, squinting at the equations on his arms, “this one is _supposed_ to blow up.”

                “Oh, okay.” The firefighter tips his head and looks behind them, back toward the building. He’s thoughtful now, assessing. “Probably not supposed to blow up in the lab, though, right?”

                Tony finally looks up, tearing his gaze away from the equations on his arm, and then visibly double-takes at the man standing across from them. “Woah. Woah, hi. Hello.”

                “Hey,” the firefighter says. He’s smiling, a little amused, a little indulgent.

                “You know,” Tony says, “if you gave me your number, I could call you before we tested something that might set off the alarms. You could come over and watch the whole show instead of just the cleanup. Stay for the afterparty, the whole thing.”

                “Oh, my God,” Rhodey says. His head falls into his hands. “The pole dancing was better, Tones. It really was.”

                The firefighter squints at the three of them, and that small smile broadens into a full-fledged grin. May finds herself smiling back, almost helplessly.

                “Tell you what,” he says, taking the eyeliner pencil out of Tony’s hand. “I will give _her_ my number.” He points the pencil right at May’s heart, and she feels a tug, like something just went taut between them.

                Tony makes an aggrieved face. “Aw hell, is it because she’s the prettiest?”

                “Sure,” the man says. “Also,” he adds, as he scrawls his number from her elbow to her wrist, “the smartest. She’s the one who brought the fire extinguisher with her.”

                May drops her eyes to her arm, staring at the blocky numbers printed carefully across her skin. And then, right below the phone number, in small, neat letters, she sees his name: _Ben_.

 

\- - -

 

                Tony double-takes the first time he lets himself into May’s apartment in the morning and finds Ben in his boxers, cooking eggs and negotiating with the coffeemaker.

                “Oh, shit,” Tony says, openly staring at the muscles of Ben’s chest. “You sure you don’t want a stripper pole?”

                “Pretty sure.” Ben says, with one of his easy shrugs. “Guess it’d be kinda fun to try out, though.”

                “Eyes up, Stark,” May says, from where she’s sitting on the couch, waiting for the breakfast that coaxed her out of bed. “Actually,” she says, after further consideration, “eyes _off_.”

                “Magpie,” Tony says, with a wide, beaming grin. “You libertine, you philanderer. You’re an _inspiration_. I’m proud to know you. I can’t believe you got him home. Did you tell him there was a fire in your pants that required emergency services?”

                May rolls her eyes. Ben – because he’s charming, always, can’t seem to stop or turn it off or even turn it down – repeats _fire in your pants_ under his breath and laughs. She can see the back of his neck turning red.

                “My lines are a little better than that, Stark,” May says, instead of getting up and going into the kitchen and making out with Ben until Tony decides to care about social cues enough to leave.

                “Teach me your ways,” Tony says, settling next to her on the couch. “Teach me everything.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony likes Ben, at first. He lights up every time Ben drives May to campus or swings by to drop off takeout at the lab or tags along on some group outing, genial and easygoing and always ready to be impressed by whatever important point Tony feels like he needs to make.

                Oddly enough, it’s Rhodey that doesn’t take to him. It’s Rhodey, so he’s never _rude_ about it. But there’s a strange disconnect between them. They’re polite, but never really friends. When May goes home to her family or locks herself up all weekend to finish a project, Ben and Tony meet up sometimes, get ice cream, go to games, do whatever it is that Tony’s decides he wants to do, but she never once hears about Rhodey and Ben even speaking to each other when she’s not in the same room.

                “What’s with you and Ben?” May asks, when they’re working on a project together and Tony, for once, has decided to focus on his own work instead of theirs.

                “Nothing’s with me and Ben,” Rhodey says, with a shrug. “We’re not involved in some torrid love affair behind your back, if that’s what you’re asking. Although Tony---”

                “Oh,” May says, “redirection. Nice.”

                “I’m just saying,” Rhodey says, hands up, “that I’m not sure if he’s decided if he wants to be adopted by the two of you or _adopted_ by the two of you, but--”

                “Is it jealousy?” May asks, and Rhodey goes still. There’s a flash of something that settles briefly in his wide eyes, the brief, unhappy slant of his mouth, but then it’s gone. Rhodey doesn’t get his feelings hurt by much, so it’s strange, seeing it here.

                “May,” he says, slowly.

                “Jesus, Jim,” she says. “Ben’s not trying to _steal_ us. We know who our best friend is. I’m dating him, and Tony falls in love with anyone who pays attention to him, but we’re not going to leave you for him. Come on. You know better.”

                Rhodey gives her a strange, unsettled look and then drops his eyes to the table between them. He stares at their notes for a long moment and then sighs, heavy and slow. “So,” he says, “I’m leaving.”

                “What,” she says, so thrown by this statement that she can’t even form a sentence. “Leaving what?”

                “At the end of the semester,” he says. “I’m graduating early. Joining the Air Force.”

                “You’re _what_?”

                They haven’t talked about it. Not _really_. Not in the sense that they’ve signed contracts or made promises. But the underlying assumption for the past year has been that, when they’re done with school, they’ll work with Tony. They’ve been daydreaming about it, throwing thoughts back and forth. _After this_ , they always say, _we’re gonna build **everything** together._

                _After this, we’re gonna save the world._

                Rhodey sighs. “Look, May,” he says, leaning toward her, “have you thought about what it’d mean, working with Tony? It means working _for_ Howard. It means SI owns _everything,_ every single inch of your intellectual property.”

                May stares at him. “You don’t trust Tony?”

                Rhodey’s jaw works and his eyes drop, and she realizes, in that second, that he _doesn’t_. “No, hey,” he says. “ _Hey_. I’d trust Tony with my firstborn, okay? I’d trust Tony to do the right thing, every time, so long as he stopped to think about it. But I don’t trust Howard, and I don’t trust Stane, and I don’t trust that Tony’s gonna keep his eyes on everything. He’s—c’mon, May. He’s easy to distract.”

                “He’s your _best friend_ ,” May says. Because, right now, she’s pulling herself from the running in that particular competition. She loves Rhodey; she does. But she’d fight most people for implying the things Rhodey’s saying about Tony.

                “He is,” Rhodey says. “I know.” He runs a hand over his face. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. The Air Force was always the plan. You know I love Tony. I’d do anything for him. But I’ve gotta find my own way, and my way has nothing to do with Howard Stark.”

                May doesn’t want to work for Howard either. She doesn’t like him, and she wasn’t impressed when she met Stane, although he seems like the more amiable of the two. But she can’t imagine walking away from Tony, who needs them. From Tony’s _brain_ , that spits out theories and thoughts in a constant rush, that takes what she gives him and builds something beautiful.

                She closes her book. “And you think,” she says, “that the _military_ is a better option? People die in the military, Rhodes. You could _die_.”

                He smiles at her, fond and a little sad. “I think oversight is the better option, May. I want to do something that matters. All Howard Stark can give me is money.”

                May thinks about her brother in his dress uniform. She thinks about the nightmares she’d had for weeks after he left for basic, the way she’d woken, already crying, from dreams about his dead body.

                “Don’t you die on me, Rhodes,” she tells him, low and serious, as fierce as she can. “It’ll be really embarrassing if I have to kick your ass at your own funeral.”

 

\- - -

 

                The fit Tony throws when he realizes Rhodey’s leaving is both predictable in its occurrence and absolutely unknowable in its intensity. For one long, hellish week, Tony burns James right out of his life, won’t see him, won’t talk to him, throws back what he pointedly calls a _penalty shot_ every time May so much as mentions his name.

                It culminates in a bleary Sunday morning, when the clock’s swerving toward 3am, and Tony’s so drunk that May can’t hold him upright anymore. She called Ben thirty minutes ago, but he’s on shift, and he offered to send one of the guy he works with to pick them up, but Tony’s such a mess that May can’t stand for any of them to see him like this.

                None of the cabs will take Tony, no matter how much May offers to pay them. They’re walking up and down the safest block in a bad part of town, and May’s exhausted and frustrated and thinks maybe the whole world is going to crash down around her if she starts crying.

                “You’re okay,” she tells Tony, who’s miraculously managed not to get any vomit on his shoes. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

                Tony’s made a pyre out of himself. May can’t haul water fast enough to save him.

                When Rhodey pulls up beside them, May takes a long, ragged breath in and plants her feet.

                “Tones,” Rhodey says. He looks wrecked for a second and then he just looks focused. “Get in the car.”

                Tony lifts his head and stares. He’s heavy and off-balance. “Fuck off,” he offers. It’s slurred and raspy, pained.

                Rhodey breathes in. His expression is dark and angry, but mostly he looks tired. He’s older than both of them. Two years older than May, four years older than Tony. He looks, in that moment, like he’s about two decades too old for this shit.

                “I’m not doing this with you, Tony,” he says. He steps away from his car. “You don’t get to hurt yourself like this every time someone does something you don’t like. Maybe no one ever taught you this, but people caring about you isn’t a weapon you get to use against them.”

                Tony draws himself up. He’s wan in the streetlights, looks half-skeletal where the fluorescent glow cuts across his cheekbones. “You’re leaving,” Tony tells him. “What the fuck do you care? You don’t _care_.”

                “ _And_ ,” Rhodey says, as he tugs Tony away from May, loops an arm around Tony’s waist, and hauls him toward the car. “ _And_ you don’t get to tell me that I don’t care about you just because I’m not doing exactly what you want exactly how you want it.”

                He maneuvers Tony into the backseat of the car and sits him up, head propped against the headrest. Tony stares at him, sick and sad and hurt.

                Rhodey sighs. His hands are careful when he buckles Tony’s seatbelt. “I love you, you asshole,” he says. “You’re my _best friend_. You don’t get to fire me for noncompliance.”

                Tony makes a noise like he’s going to throw up again, but he just tips his head away, rests his forehead against the glass, and closes his eyes. Rhodey watches him for a few seconds and then goes back to get May, pulling her into a hug that feels almost medicinal in the way it stings and then soothes.

                “Thanks,” she says. “Thanks for coming to get us.”

                “Ben called me,” Rhodey says. “Why didn’t you?”

                She doesn’t know at first, and then she does. “I didn’t think he’d let you help him.”

                Rhodey sighs. She feels his chest expand as his arms wrap tighter around her, and she didn’t know how badly she needed reinforcements until he showed up. “He’s never going to be able to stop me from looking after him.”

                She leans into him, face pressed against his shoulder, and she think that’s probably true. But she also thinks it’s going to be pretty hard for Rhodey to save Tony from himself when he’s halfway across the world.

 

\- - -

 

                They go to Rhodey’s graduation and then they go home, back to Queens, where Tony slowly unfurls like a flower turning toward light. Her family draws the poison out of him, and he spends three weeks working at Parker Automotive and gossiping with May’s grandmother and squabbling with Leo. Richard and Mary swing by with their new son, Peter, who’s three months old and sweetly curious, and Tony, who’s clearly never been around a baby before, is fascinated and terrified in equal measure.

                Richard and Mary seem strained and distracted, and there’s something newly anxious in Richard’s mannerisms, in the way he double-checks locks and sidesteps questions about his work. May figures he’s tired, and she volunteers herself and Tony for babysitting duty, which Tony regards with the gravity of heart surgery. He’s just barely relaxed to the point of being able to hold Peter easily when his father shows up to drag him to Manhattan.

                A month later, Tony comes by to pick her up on their way to Rhodey’s graduation from officer training, and they take another private jet down to Alabama, where Tony insists on buying a University of Alabama hat for May and then making her wear it into gas stations and grocery stores and two separate Waffle Houses.

                “You gotta,” Tony says, miming a hat tip and then lowering his voice dramatically, “ _Roll tide_. You gotta do that to people, May. It’s a traditional greeting down here.”

                “You are a nightmare,” May says, although she can’t keep the affection out of her voice.

                She’s suntanned and lazy and excited to see Rhodey, even if going in and out of the military base makes her nervous.

                “It’s all the guns,” May announces, when she and Tony are following a growing swell of families toward what they assume is the right part of the base. “Anywhere in this place, I could be dead in thirty seconds.”

                Tony looks over at her, bemused. “May,” he says, “Mayday, Magpie, America’s sassiest sweetheart, these people are here to _protect_ you.”

                “Sure,” she says, but her eyes still track every rifle in sight.

                “And,” Tony continues, knocking his elbow into hers, “those are mostly my guns anyway.”

                May snorts, shaking her head. “You can still get killed by your own guns, Tony.”

                Tony laughs like it’s a joke, like it’s the most ludicrous thing she’s ever said. “Only in the wrong hands,” he says, “and none of the bad guys ever get our toys.”

                May wonders if that’s true. She thinks about Rhodey, about the concern on his face when he said _It means SI owns **everything** , every single inch of your intellectual property. _

                For the first time in a while, May thinks about what she builds, about the way her mind works, and she feels distant from Tony, like they’re growing in disparate directions.

                But then they’re distracted, standing shoulder to shoulder, trying to pick Rhodey out of the crowd. After some yelling and clapping and whooping, Rhodey’s finally released, and then it’s the three of them, crashing together all over again. It’s still Rhodey, just Rhodey with a strange hat and more muscles, and May didn’t realize she was worried he’d change until she’s reassured to find that he mostly hasn’t.

                “Hold on,” he says, tipping his chin to the side, grinning so wide May can’t help but grin back. “Gotta go see my family. Don’t let anybody flirt with either one of you. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

                Tony, apparently feeling contrary or maybe just enthusiastically patriotic, proceeds to flirt mercilessly with three separate people until Rhodey comes back to chase the last one away.

                “I _told_ you,” Rhodey says, sighing expansively. “At least May listens.”

                “May’s practically married,” Tony says, waving that aside. “I’m sick of being a bridesmaid. I gotta lock something down while I still have this girlish figure.”

                “Nobody here can support you, Tones,” Rhodey says. “Now, take me off this base or lose me forever.”

                May laughs and slides between them, hooks her arms into theirs so the three of them are walking arm-in-arm. She’d been so worried that they would lose this once Rhodey left school. And it’s changed, maybe, but she doesn’t feel any less important, even if Rhodey has new priorities. Rhodey’s wearing someone else’s uniform, but he still belongs to them.

                Later, she’ll think a lot about that moment. About Rhodey in his dress uniform and Tony in his fancy shoes and Iron Maiden t-shirt. About herself in a sundress and sandals, smiling wide and bright.

                They’re caught in a bubble of happiness, glowing with it. May’s so happy she feels untouchable.

                At first, when she sees Leo leaning against Tony’s car, she’s just surprised and pleased, thrilled to see him.

                And then she remembers that Leo’s fond of Tony but barely knows Rhodey. And Montgomery, Alabama is a seventeen-hour drive from Queens, and Leo’s wearing every one of those hours in the dark marks under his eyes and the tense line of his jaw.

                Leo straightens up when he sees her, and there’s something horrible on his face. “Oh, kiddo,” he says, heavy and soft, the same way he’d said it when she started crying at their grandpa’s funeral five years back.

                May feels everything – the sun, the earth, the whole swirling universe – jolt to a stop beneath her feet. She feels Tony breathe in, feels the muscles of Rhodey’s arm lock up.

                “Who?” she says, because she knows. Of course she knows. She can see grief in her cousin’s eyes, and she’s torn in half, because she doesn’t want to know and _has to_ know, immediately, has to catch at the edges of what she’s lost. “Leo,” she says, stepping away from Tony and James, “who is it? Nonna? Is it— _Dad_? Mom? Who, Leo, who’s--”

                “Rich,” he says. It hits like a slap, like a punch, like a truck. “It’s Richard and Mary. They’re—May, they’re gone.”

                That bubble that made her feel untouchable dissipates in an instant, and she feels her heart crack and splinter like glass in her chest.

                She takes a breath. She’s already crying. She tries to open her mouth to ask, but she’s a coward, suddenly. She can’t know. It’s too much horror to hold in her head at once.

                _Peter_ , she thinks. Peter, with his bright eyes and tiny smile, the way he’d curl his fingers in her shirt and hair and stare up at her like she was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. _Peter_.

                “Peter,” Tony says, for her. “Leo, is Peter—is the kid--?”

                “Peter’s okay,” Leo says. “He’s fine. The baby’s fine. May, _May_ , look at me. C’mon.”

                Her brother’s dead, but her nephew is alive, and somehow, now that she’s found the outer limit of what she’s lost, she can feel the weight of it. She tries to catch her breath, and the sharp splinters of her heart shred her lungs on the inhale. Some breathless, wounded noise wrenches out of her, and Leo catches her, tucks her in close like she’s fourteen all over again.

                Five minutes ago, she was cocooned in happiness, wrapped up with Tony and Rhodey in a joy that seemed infinite and indestructible. And now she’s locked away from them, leaning into Leo, suffocating on shared misery, and they’re so far away that she can’t feel them at all.


	4. Chapter 4

                Tony sticks close, all through the funeral and in the days leading up to it. Howard pulls into the neighborhood the day before the funeral in a flashy Rolls-Royce, and May thinks she might actually kill him, thinks Leo would absolutely help her hide the body, but he’s not there to take Tony away.

                “Sorry to hear about your brother, May,” Howard says. He’s standing outside his car, hand curled almost defensively around the door. There’s a flat blankness to him that seems brittle, like there’s a chance he might crack open and show something real. “I can’t imagine what it’s like. I was an only child. But, in the war, I lost—well. I suppose it’s not the same.”

                He’s brought a suit for Tony to wear to the funeral. Once he hands over the suit bag, he seems lost for a moment and then gives May a sharp look and a decisive nod. “If there’s anything I can do,” he says, “let me know.”

                It’s the most he’s ever reminded her of Tony. In that span of less than sixty seconds, when he stands on her stoop and seems uncertain, she catches a reflection of Tony’s innate drive to fix anything he finds broken.

                “Thanks,” she says.

                He nods again, and then he’s gone. May stands on the stoop for a while, crushing Tony’s suit bag to her chest, trying to breathe.

 

\- - -

 

                She loses the thread of the summer after that. It feels like drowning. It feels like fighting to the surface over and over again, rolling a rock of grief up a hill that never plateaus. She was supposed to have Richard her whole life. She knew, deep down, that she would lose her grandparents, lose her parents, lose her uncles and aunts and some of her older cousins. But Richard was only four years older than her. She was supposed to get a lifetime with her brother.

                Tony stays until August. He works twelve hour days at Parker Automotive. For a while, he and Ollie practically run the shop alone.

                That first terrible week, in those smeared-together days after they bury Richard, Tony helps May clean out her brother’s old room so they can set up a nursery for Peter. May works mechanically, sorting and folding and boxing and labeling. She thinks, after holding her mother’s hand through the funeral, that there’s nothing left in the world that can touch her, but she comes apart entirely when she finds a stack of letters she wrote to Richard when he was in basic training.

                “I’m sorry,” she says, hands over her face. She’s so tired of crying, sick to death of all the grief that builds up in her like poison. “I’m sorry, Tony. I’ll be okay in a minute.”

                “Jesus Christ, May,” Tony says, arms wrapped around her. “You don’t have to be okay in a minute. You don’t have to be okay _ever_.”

                But she does, and she will. Her mother’s aged ten years in ten days, and her father’s chain-smoking like he has a twenty-year-old’s lungs.

                She is going to be okay in a minute. By any means necessary, she will be.

                “You’re amazing,” May tells him. She tightens her hands in Tony’s shirt. She’s holding on too hard, but she needs him to understand that she means it. “Thanks, Tony. For everything. I don’t—you don’t have to stay. I know it’s terrible here.”

                “I’m not leaving,” Tony says. He rocks a little, off-beat and a bit unsteady, the way he rocks Peter. “C’mon, Mayday, I’m not leaving until I take you back to MIT.”

                “MIT,” May says. It’s a light, an endpoint. A finish line she can cross, arms raised, and never look back. “MIT,” she repeats, like a prayer.

                The next day, Ben drives up as soon as he’s off-shift. He shows up at 8am, bleary-eyed but hellbent on being useful, and he and Tony spend the day building baby furniture in the new nursery. May doesn’t ask where the furniture came from or who paid for it. She brings them coffee and then lunch, and she helps when she can be helpful, and she falls asleep that night with Ben curled protectively around her, heart beating slow and steady beneath her ear.

                Without Tony’s smuggled shots of whiskey and long days at the garage, without Ben’s steady hands and sympathetic eyes, without Rhodey’s phone calls and frank questions and hours of patient listening, she’d disintegrate. But they hold her together. With squared shoulders and soft smiles and iron wills, they keep her at the surface, bear enough of the burden that she’s never crushed beneath it.

                She loves them, endlessly. She misses her brother. She holds Peter and tells him everything she remembers about Richard, every stupid joke and childish prank and sweet gesture and noble intention. She holds Peter and promises that she will always, _always_ look after him.

                When the summer ends, she leaves. Every mile spools out in the rearview, and the thread of what she’s leaving pulls taut and hooks deep until Tony has to pull over outside the Massachusetts state line, because she feels like she can’t breathe.

                “If it’s too soon,” Tony says, “you can—May, I’ll tell your professors. I’ll get your assignments. I’ll _do_ your assignments. You don’t have to--”

                “I do,” she says. Because she does. Because she fought so hard for this, and Richard always supported her. He was so proud, she remembers. He was so _proud_ when she got in. He told all his friends that his kid sister was going to MIT.

                She takes a breath, plants her feet. She wipes her face clean with the back of her hand. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, let’s go.”

_\- - -_

                Back at MIT, she has no time or patience for boys who think she needs help, for professors who assume she can’t do the work, for TA’s who correct her grammar like her Queens accent has a single thing to do with her intelligence. Her first year, she stepped carefully on campus, but this is her third year, and she’s not careful about anything anymore. She feels like she crash-landed back in Cambridge. She feels battered and battle-worn, blood-splattered.

                “Get ‘em, tiger,” Tony says. He’s doing masters-level work now. The professors are throwing anything they can at him to keep him occupied. The fire department has been called a record number of zero times since the end of the spring term.

                Without Rhodey, they build less. Without Rhodey, they sleep less.

                Ben keeps them fed when he’s around, and his weaponized puppy eyes are enough to shame even Tony into catching a few hours of sleep on whichever couch is closest. Tony parties less, but it’s impossible to tell if that’s because he’s finally outgrowing it or if it’s because he thinks he needs to look after May.

                “I’m fine, Tony,” May tells him. “You know that. Right? I’m fine.”

                “Sure, May,” Tony says. “I know that.”

                She isn’t, though, and she doesn’t know what to do about it. She’s never felt like this before. She has nightmares, at least once a week, of something terrible happening to Peter. She calls home every day. If no one answers, she keeps calling over and over until someone picks up.

                “Do you think maybe you should see someone?” Ben asks, one particularly bad night, when he came home after his shift and found her on his couch, lying on her side and staring at nothing, crying without realizing.

                “I want to see my brother,” she tells him. But that’s cruel, asking for something he can’t give. “I want—I need to see Peter.”

                “Okay,” Ben says, mouth pressed softly against her temple, nose buried in her hair. “We’ll go up this weekend. You can do your reading on the way. I’ll drive.”

                She starts going home once a month, with Ben or sometimes with Tony. She holds Peter in her arms and looks down at eyes the exact shade of her dead brother’s, and it’s the only time she feels like she can take a deep breath. It’s the only time the heavy weight of fear lifts off her throat.

               

_\- - -_

                If the fall semester felt like dragging herself off a battlefield, the spring semester feels like digging her own grave. It’s not that she doesn’t love the work. She will always – _always_ – love learning, and she could happily spend all of her life locked in a lab with Tony, safe in that back-and-forth mindmeld that feels like coming home.  

                But she saw the new worry lines etched into her mother’s face over winter break. She saw the weight her father lost, saw her parents raising another child with money and energy they don’t have.

                She tells Ben weeks before she tells Tony.

                “I need to drop out,” she says. She tells him over breakfast, sipping the coffee he made for her. Her tone is even and calm, like she’s discussing the weather.

                Ben gives her a look like she just said _I have cancer_. “Oh, May,” he says, “are you sure?”

                She closes her eyes. For a moment, she can taste tears in the back of her throat. She swallows coffee until the taste is gone. “I have to look after Pete.” Her voice is steady when she speaks, and it’s such a strange thing to hear, when her heart feels like it’s spinning in a centrifuge. “Mom and Dad—they can’t do it. No one else can do it. I have to.”

                The look Ben gives her is so sweetly heartbroken that she can’t stand to look at it.

                “Don’t look at me like that.” she says. “It’s okay, Ben. It’s my decision.”

                There are worse things, she knows, than giving up on a dream. It’s not forever. And it’s not the worst thing that could have happened. The worst thing would’ve been to lose Peter, too. This is just a dream. She can always pick another dream.

                “I love you,” Ben says. His hand curls around hers. “If you want to, if it’ll help, you can move in, and we can—I’ve got that extra bedroom, May. Let me help you.”

                She closes her eyes again. She doesn’t want to cry. She wastes so much of her life crying.

                “I love you,” she says. “I’d—yes. I’d like that.”

                Ben’s quiet for a long time. When he takes a breath, he sounds like he’s bracing for something terrible. “How are you going to tell Tony?”

                She bites hard into the inside of her mouth. This is the very worst part. The loss of what MIT meant for her is heavy and ugly and barbed, but _Tony_. Leaving Tony feels like a betrayal.

                “I don’t know,” she says. And then she’s crying anyway, just thinking about his face, imagining what he’ll do, when no one’s around to remind him that he matters.

_\- - -_

                When she tells Tony, it’s both better and worse than she expects. She waits until after finals, when they have only a few days left on campus. She picks the timeframe carefully; she doesn’t want to tank Tony’s projects or throw him into a self-destructive spiral right before finals. She wants to give him the opportunity to avoid seeing her for as long as he needs. She wants to give herself the opportunity to not have to see Tony deliberately avoiding her.

                Rhodey’s on leave for the next week. They have a road trip planned, the three of them, but May has already warned Rhodey she might back out, if Tony needs the space.

                When she tells Tony she won’t be coming back in the fall, he just stares at her, intent but confused, like she’d told him she’d decided to no longer abide by the rules of gravity.

                “It’s Peter,” she says. “I need to look after him.”

                “Your parents, though,” Tony says. “He’s staying with your parents.”

                May stares back at him, waits for him to think it through. Tony’s mind prefers to skim like a rock on the surface, darting from place to place, but he’ll dive as deep as he needs to, when he’s prompted. “My parents aren’t well enough to raise a toddler, Tony.”

                Tony blinks. “What are you talking about? Your dad could juggle tanks.”

                Her dad gives that kind of impression. He’s been like that his whole life. And Tony’s probably not brave enough to go rifling through her parents’ medicine cabinet, but May’s been pouring over the labels for years. Her father’s blood pressure is a noose tightening around his neck.

                “They aren’t well enough,” she says. “I’m taking Peter.”

                Tony’s face clouds over, brow furrowing. “Jesus, May, it’s one year. You’ve got _one more_ year. Just finish it. Why do you have to drop out? It’s _one year_.”

                “He needs me,” she says. “ _They_ need me.” She doesn’t have words to explain this. If Tony doesn’t know, he can’t be told. And she wouldn’t blame him for not knowing. She’s not sure Howard Stark’s ever needed anything he couldn’t buy or alter or control, and she doesn’t know enough about Maria to make that call.

                But that’s not fair. Tony’s family is bloodless, but _Tony_ isn’t.

                “If it was Rhodey,” she says, “if he got hurt. If he needed you, would you wait a year?”

                Tony hesitates. He points a finger at her, half-accusing, half-remonstrative, as if he understands the point but doesn’t appreciate it. “If he needed 24/7 care, I’d hire help. If he didn’t, I could still go to school.”

                “I am not,” May says, “going to outsource raising a _child_.”

                She should’ve tried harder to hide the disgust in her voice. Tony flinches like she’d spat right in his face.

                “Nannies,” he says, “daycare. _Babysitters_ , May. It’s what people do. It’s one year. He’s practically nonverbal at this point. Why do you need to be there every moment of every day?”

                May runs her hand over her face. “Family isn’t a party, Tony. You don’t get to stay for the fun part and then pay someone else to clean up the mess. And we don’t— _I_ don’t have the money for that. None of us have the money for that. Do you have any idea how expensive this school is?”

                Tony opens his mouth, and she waves him off. “I _mean_ ,” she says, “do you have any idea how expensive it is for _me_?”

                Because Tony can probably quote the numbers, but there’s no way he understands what they mean. Not Tony _Stark_. Not the boy who once bought a Ferrari for the weekend because he’d taken his Alfa Romeo apart on a lark and hadn’t bothered piecing it back together again.

                Tony drums his fingers on the desk. “Let me pay.”

                “Tony.” May breathes out, covers her face with her hands.

                “No,” he says, “this is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous. You have one year left, and you’re dropping out because you can’t afford a babysitter? Let me pay for it, May. It’s nothing. I won’t even _notice_.”

                May opens her mouth to say something practical and kind. Tony isn’t delicate, but some of his nerves run dangerously close to the surface. He’s brave and relentless and stubborn, but he is vulnerable, always, to rejection. She’s always careful not to hurt him.

                She means to say, _He’s my nephew, and I love him_ or maybe _Do you know what an attachment disorder is, Tony?_ or even _I wasn’t there every moment of every day for Richard, and he died. I’m not risking that with Peter_.

                What comes out of her mouth is: “Your money isn’t going to fix this, Tony. My brother is dead. Peter is more important than making sure you don’t set any labs on fire.”

                Tony hisses in a sharp, surprised breath. “Fuck you,” he says, off-hand, a reactionary flinch.

                “Fuck _you_ ,” she returns, patience snapping.

                “Why are you _doing_ this?” Tony’s gestures are sharp; his eyes are cold, closed-off. “Just giving up? To go play _house_? Why are you—people marched in the streets so you could finish college, May, and you’re just gonna throw on an apron and--”

                May makes a choked-off noise, shocked and stung. “Throw on an—listen, you little shit, people marched in the streets so I’d have a _choice_. And I’m choosing my _family_.”

                Tony blinks at her, face careening through a series of emotions so fast it’s like watching a carousel flash by. “Little shit,” he repeats, eyes suddenly going bright. “Mayday, you haven’t called me a little shit since the day we met. Remember?”

                She sees him, suddenly. With bruised eyes and floppy hair, sprawled out asleep in their very first class. Her heart constricts and then aches in her chest. He’d been so young. He is still so young. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen when she goes.

                “I’m sorry,” May tells him. Because she is. Because he deserves better. Because, in a kinder, fairer world, she never ever would have left him. “This isn’t—you know this isn’t what I wanted.”

                He’s still for a moment and then he smiles. It’s sad and thin, but there’s a bit of warmth coming back to his eyes. “I’d find a really good nanny. The best there is, May. I want the best for Peter, too. But I also want the best for you.”

                God help her, she’s tempted. She wants the life she planned. She wants the life she earned for herself. She wants late nights and conferences, coffee and pancakes and terrible beer. She wants to be responsible for herself and for Tony and for no one else.

                She’s scared, maybe. She’s scared of what she’s giving up, scared of what she’s taking on. She’s scared she won’t be enough.

                But she knows, also, that if the positions were reserved, if she were dead, she’d want Richard to raise her son. And no one else, no matter how experienced, no matter how competent, would do.

                There are things best left to family. If Tony doesn’t understand that, it’s not his fault.

                “I have to,” she says. “You know that, right? I wouldn’t—Tony, I would never give this up if I didn’t have to.”

                He studies her, head tilted, mouth pressed flat. She can practically feel him weighing things out in his head, trying to find some workaround, trying to logic his way through to a better alternative. That he’s not lashing out, that he’s being _careful_ , is maybe the most significant sign of growth she’s ever seen from him.

                Well, she supposes they’re all getting older.

                When he smiles, it looks like it hurts. “Magpie,” he says, “you’ve always looked out for me. Always. It’d be pretty shitty of me to resent you for doing the same thing for Peter.”

                He’s quiet for a moment. His hands twist together with anxious energy. “The kid needs you more than I do.” He says it like he’s trying to make himself believe it.

                May wraps her arms around him, pulls in him close. He’s just as tall as she is now, but, if she goes up on her tiptoes, she can still bury her nose in the soft curls of his hair. She presses a kiss to his forehead, prays with every ounce of her soul that it can impart some kind of protection.

                “You’re my best friend,” she says. “I’ll be right here, Tony. I’ll always be right here if you need me.”

                “I know, May,” he says. His arms are curled tight around her waist. She thinks he might be crying, but she knows he wouldn’t want her to see. “Goddamn it, Magpie, I’m gonna miss you so much.”

                It feels like doing open-heart surgery on herself. Like she’s watching her own hands cut something critical right out of the center of herself.

                She has to, and so she will, but, God, does she wish she didn’t have to.

                “I love you, too,” she says.

                He breathes out, shakey and pained, and she holds tight, for as long as she can.

_\- - -_

                May’s worried that Tony’s going to skip the road trip, sneak off home in his private jet and leave her and Rhodey lingering in the parking lot for hours, waiting. Or he’ll show up late and hungover, spend the whole first day face down in the backseat, groaning every time they take a corner too sharp. But he shows up bright-eyed and jaunty, with a backpack over his shoulder and the keys to some SUV that costs more than May’s entire – unfinished – college education.

                “Hey,” he says, when they’re loaded up in the car, “you guys want to go to Italy?”

                Rhodey turns to stare at him and then tips a glance back to May. “Is this an aquatic car, Tony?”

                Tony laughs, and it’s a bit high-pitched, leaning manic, but he seems steady enough. “No, jet’s waiting. I thought it’d be fun.”

                They both stare at him in dumbstruck silence, and he shifts uncertainly and then gestures over his shoulder, toward his backpack. “I have your passports.”

                “My mother has my passport,” Rhodey says.

                “I don’t have a passport,” May adds.

                Tony leans back to give May an incredulous look. “Yeah,” he says, “I thought that was weird.” His eyes move to Rhodey, and he smiles. “Also, your mom’s a delight.”

                “You can’t just take us to Italy,” May objects. “That’s…”

                “Expensive?” Tony hazards. “Because that’s really not--”

                “Impulsive,” Rhodey says.

                Tony turns back toward the steering wheel. He looks out at the parking lot for a moment and then lifts his shoulder in a shrug. “Look,” he says, “you’re both—I just thought it’d be nice. The three of us, you know? One last adventure.”

                “It’s not the last one,” May says. It _can’t_ be the last one.

                “Before we’re all tied down,” Tony clarifies. “I mean, you’ve got Ben and Peter, and Rhodey has his torrid love affair with Lady Liberty, and I’m— well. In a couple years, I’ll be working for SI. When’re we gonna get to do this again? Why the hell would we go to Florida when we could go to Florence?”

                May looks over at Rhodey. In a week, she has to go home and tell her parents that she wants to raise Peter. In a week, she will be someone’s assigned grownup, and she’s barely done growing herself. She’s giving up the future she planned, and the freedom she’s used to, and she wants this. She wants one last week. She wants one last chance to chase after Tony, careening through life beside him as they run down another wild dream.

                Rhodey hesitates. “I can’t just leave the country without notifying people, Tony. There’s a whole process.”

                Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I took care of it,” he says. “Honestly, Rhodey, I think the Air Force would’ve let me take you to the moon if I’d asked.”

                May can imagine that’s true. Given how much business SI does with the military, she imagines Tony could’ve asked for Rhodey to be reassigned as his personal bodyguard indefinitely.

                From the look on Rhodey’s face, he doesn’t entirely appreciate Tony meddling in his military life. He glances back at May, and, whatever he sees on her face, he must decide it outweigh his irritation. There’s a second of lingering discomfort in his eyes, and then Rhodey’s smiling, shaking his head. “Alright, Stark,” he says, slipping his sunglasses on his face and leaning back against the seat, “you win. Take us to Italy.”         

_\- - -_

                Their week in Italy is amazing. It’s insane. Tony wanders into hotels that May can barely look at, and he charms the desk clerks before he ever even mentions his name. They float around Italy like errant royalty, sipping wine May can’t pronounce on trains to places she doesn’t know. May and Rhodey have been a united front of conservatism for years in regards to Tony’s money. But, by some quiet unspoken agreement, they let Tony throw as much of his money at them as he wants for this one week.

                It’s not a goodbye party. Not exactly. They aren’t saying goodbye to each other. But it feels like they might be saying goodbye to their youth, to those long, heedless days of living in each other’s pockets.

                Tony’s right. Responsibility is coming for all three of them. They won’t have a chance like this again.

                May gets carelessly, gloriously wine drunk on their first night in Rome. She walks back to their hotel with her head resting on Rhodey’s shoulder, laughing at Tony. They stay on the balcony of their top floor suite until dawn, talking about nothing, drinking wine, curled up together against the midnight chill.

                They sleep until noon and then stumble into each other, watching news in Italian that only Tony can understand, until room service arrives with coffee so amazing that it resurrects the three of them. And then they’re unleashed on the streets of Rome again, on a quest to find the best gelato in the city, which ends with Rhodey curled over next to another beautiful fountain, holding his head, whining about a brain freeze until May and Tony lay their hands on his forehead, keep pressing until Rhodey finally relaxes.

                They spend one day on Capri, where May again gets happily drunk on limoncello and then sprawls out on the beach while Rhodey and Tony take turns half-drowning each other in the sea.

                They go to Florence, and Venice, and Sorento, and Tony drives them through narrow city streets, yelling things at other drivers that May can almost understand, just by tone alone.

                For a week, they are responsible to nothing and no one except themselves. It’s a wonderful whirlwind of a time. May ends the week with a healthy tan and happiness that feels melancholy but marrow-deep. On the plane ride home, Tony fastens a Saint Albert medallion around her neck.

                “It’s extra holy,” he tells her, earnestly. “I got it from the Vatican.”

                She’s not sure if that makes it any extra holy, but her grandmother will certainly be impressed. “Saint Albert,” she repeats, thumb running over the raised edges of the medallion.

                “Patron saint of scientists,” Tony tells her. It’s sweet, that he did this. May is Catholic in the same way she’s from Queens; it’s part of who she is, but it’s not something she chose or devotes much time to. “And medicine. And Cincinnati, too, but that’s not really relevant.”

                “Thanks,” she says. Rhodey’s asleep four feet away, head tipped back against the window. May’s been thinking idly about curling up next to him, using his shoulder as a pillow, but she’ll wait until after Tony drops off into his own nap.

                Tony’s watching her, careful and focused. It’s the way he studies interesting algorithms and unexpected data. He’s looking at her like he’s trying to memorize her.

                “Thanks for doing this,” he says. “I know it was kind of spontaneous. I just wanted—I’d give you two the whole world, you know? If you’d let me.”

                There’s always going to be something tragic about loving Tony Stark. May thinks that’s how it works, when you love someone who doesn’t know how to love themselves.

                She smiles at him, fingers still clinging tight to the necklace, and then she leans over to kiss his cheek. “Well,” she says, “I’ve got you and Rhodey. So I’ve already got the best part of the world.”

                “And Peter and Ben,” Tony says, half-smiling. His eyes seem sad, but only for a second.

                “Yes,” she says, feeling split right in two for no reason at all. “And Peter, and Ben.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone keeping track at home, this fic was originally going to be 9 chapters, which, according to my outline, would've run right through to about the end of _Avengers_. Having fallen just stupid in love with these endearing idiots, I don't think I can leave them there. So buckle up, we'll be sticking with them for awhile.

                Ben’s spare bedroom is full of exercise equipment. When asked, he swears he doesn’t even use it, and the whole set disappears overnight after she agrees to move in with him. They spend a weekend toward the end of her lease shifting everything from her apartment into his, and Ben diligently baby-proofs the apartment and then takes the ceiling fan out of the spare bedroom because he has a nightmare about it falling on the crib and crushing Peter.  

                “It’s a whirling deathtrap, May,” he tells her, very seriously. “Not in my house.”

                “Yes, very dangerous,” she agrees and then kisses him on the cheek to stop herself from laughing in his sweet, earnest, vaguely terrified face.

                The plan is to move Peter in during the first week of June, but things are complicated extensively by the fact that May’s parents won’t let her take Peter out of the city.

                It’s enough of a fight – an _awful_ fight, a raised-voices, doors-slamming verbal brawl – just to get them to admit they don’t have the time, or energy, or money to raise another child.

                “He’s the last thing I’ve got of Richard, too.” Her dad’s voice is hard to listen to, raspy and deep and hurt. “He’s all I have left of my son. You aren’t taking him to Massachusetts. That’s three hours away, May, _no_.”

                They won’t give in, but Peter can’t stay with them, and so the only option is for May to move back.

                She doesn’t know how she’s going to survive it, giving up Tony and Ben, too. But when she calls Ben to tell him, he makes a series of thoughtful noises on the other end of the phone and then says, “You think they don’t need firefighters in New York?”

                “What?” she asks, startled. “Ben, you can’t—your whole life is in Cambridge. You can’t just _move_.”

                “Well, May,” Ben says, “it kinda sounds like my whole life is in New York now.”

_\- - -_

                They move into a small apartment four blocks from her parents’ place. May’s too busy for melancholy all summer, but she finds herself unsettled in late August, moving from room to room, wondering what she’s missing and why she can’t find it. It isn’t until Tony calls to tell her about his classes that she realizes why she’s been so restless.

                “Oh,” she says, hand curling around the phone. “Anything interesting this year?”

                “Absolutely not,” Tony says. “It’s all boring, Magpie. You aren’t missing a thing.”

                It’s kind of him, and loyal. But she knows what she gave up, and she did it with her eyes open. “Tony,” she says, “tell me.”

                There’s a pause where she can almost feel him trying to hold himself back. She imagines him hunched over his notes, phone jammed between his shoulder and ear while he sketches frantic schematics in the margins of his newest notebook.

                “Okay,” he says, excitement leaking into his voice, “okay, May, there’s this one thing.”

                They spend an hour and a half on the phone, working through Tony’s newest project. It’s harder to manage their back-and-forth over the phone. She needs to see the way his eyes light up, the shapes his hands make in the air. She needs the messy pencil sketches and the scattered textbooks and the piles of notes.

                They get there, eventually, but it was easier when they worked side-by-side.

                “Oh shit, May,” Tony says, “it’s gotta be bedtime, right? For Pete?”

                Ben’s been bustling around in the background. He’s good with Peter, although he’s also something of a pushover and completely helpless against Peter’s puppy eyes. May finds it exasperating when she isn’t busy finding it absolutely adorable.

                “I think Ben’s tucking him in,” she says, when she scans the visible areas of the apartment and doesn’t find Ben or Peter anywhere.

                “Go,” Tony says. “Go, Mayday, that’s your kid.”

                And he _is_ her kid, even if Peter’s not the only person May worries about. Peter’s hers to look after, hers to take care of. He doesn’t need her for every bedtime, but she imagines there will be plenty of bedtimes she has to miss in the future. No reason to miss this one, when the only thing stopping her is a phone call she could continue later.

                “Okay, Tony,” she says. “Be good, okay? Be careful. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

                “Yeah, got it,” Tony says. “Be smart, be fast, and don’t get caught.”

                “That is absolutely not what I said,” May says, rolling her eyes and hoping he can feel it all the way in Cambridge.

                “Smart, and fast,” Tony repeats, “and don’t get caught.”

                May hangs up on him, because if he hears her laughing at his jokes he’s never going to learn to stop making them.

                She calls him back the next day, but he doesn’t answer. She leaves a message that he returns the day after that, when she and Peter are out at the park, braving the tall slide. She calls him and misses him that night, but he calls again the next morning, and they talk about nanoelectronics while she coaxes Peter into finishing his breakfast.

                She misses it. Of course she does. She misses _him_.

                But she knows, always, that she made the right decision.

 

\- - -

 

                May picks up odd shifts at Parker Automotive, and Ben finds a job within two weeks of moving to the city, and they’re fine. She’s no better off than her parents were at her age, but she’s no _worse_ either. She doesn’t have everything she wanted, but she has Ben’s soft smiles and steady devotion and Peter’s burbling laughter and endless curiosity, and, if it’s not everything she ever wanted, it’s still better than she expected.

                Time moves quickly with a toddler to manage. She talks to Tony sporadically, usually three or four times a week, and she talks to Rhodey regularly, every Sunday night. Peter speaks in clumsy sentences and builds towers of blocks that he cheerfully knocks to the ground again. He has favorite books and favorite songs and would probably spend his whole life on Ben’s shoulders if he could get away with it.

                May feels like she spends one week in August humming with mild heartbreak because she’s not at MIT and then, when she looks up again, it’s springtime.

                Ben proposes on her birthday. Peter’s with her parents, and they’re walking back through the park after an early dinner, and she found the ring in his sock drawer three weeks ago, but she’s surprised anyway.

                After she says yes, she doesn’t stop smiling for hours. She’s still smiling when she calls Rhodey, who sounds concerned when he answers, asks “What’s wrong? Is it Tony? Is it—May? Are you okay?” before she can tell him that she’s calling late on a Friday night for _good_ reasons. He doesn’t quite recover afterwards, makes his way to surprised and cautiously pleased but never exactly exuberant. She forgives him anyway because she’s too happy not to.

                She’s smiling again when she calls Tony, who goes from sleepy and grumpy to boundlessly happy in the five seconds it takes to tell him she’s engaged.

                “May Parker!” he crows into the phone. “You minx, you _heartbreaker_. Do I get to be the maid of honor?”

                “There’s no way you could pull off the heels,” May says. A second too late, she realizes she knows better than to issue challenges like that to Tony Stark.

                “Bullshit I couldn’t,” Tony says. He sounds offended and incredulous, which is exactly the way he always sounds before he gets himself into trouble. “When’s the wedding? I can do it. Give me three weeks to train up, and I’ll run a marathon in stilettos.”

                “There’s no way I’m letting you steal the show at my wedding,” May says, changing tactics. “Absolutely not, Stark.”

                “Buzzkill,” Tony accuses. “Killjoy.”

                May covers her face with her hands and tries to smother her laughter to a reasonable volume. Just fifteen feet away, Peter’s drowsing in Ben’s lap while they watch a taped episode of _Sesame Street._ “It’s _my_ wedding. I get to wear the best shoes.”

                “Fine,” Tony says, “but I’ll remember this slight, May Parker. Don’t you think that I’ll—oh shit, are you not gonna be a Parker anymore? Mayday, Magpie. This is serious. Am I gonna have to get another shirt?”

                “It’s still Parker Automotive,” May tells him, rolling her eyes. “My _dad’s_ not changing his name.”

                “Of course not,” Tony says, “but, Magpie, my loyalty’s to you.”

                May smiles, shaking her head. Across the room, Ben glances up at her and grins. He looks happy and tired. His light brown hair is a tousled mess of lazy curls. Peter is fully out, with his head tipped back against Ben’s chest, mouth open, one hand clutching tight to Ben’s sleeve.

                _The rest of my life_ , she thinks, and her heart swells in her chest like a living thing, like a bird shaking its wings before flight.

_\- - -_

                She hadn’t thought about the name thing, honestly. She hadn’t realized how much _Parker_ meant to her.

                “Listen,” she says, later that night, when Peter’s tucked in and they’re sprawled together in bed. “Is it going to break your heart if I don’t take your last name?”

                “Oh,” Ben says. He’s quiet for long enough that she starts to worry, but, when she goes to lift her head, he runs his fingers soothingly through her hair. “No,” he says, finally. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, actually.”

                “Yeah?” She lays her head back against his chest, closes her eyes while his fingers work through her hair.

                “Well,” he says. “You know. My family.”

                Ben never talks about his family. They fought about it early on, because May thought he was keeping her away from them. She thought he was ashamed of her, or more casual about her than he said he was. She hadn’t understood. After all, even Tony has _family_.

                Ben has no one. He’s an orphan, just like Peter.

                She can never work out which one of them is the more tragic case, because Peter lost his parents, and Ben was taken away from his. For good reason.

                Sometimes she thinks it’s some kind of miracle that Ben can be so sweet and good without having learned it from anyone. And then other times she thinks it was inevitable, that his nature was too bright to go dark. Either way, Ben learned what it meant to be small and scared and unsafe, and he made himself into a shield so that no one around him ever had to feel that way again.

                “I was thinking,” Ben says, hand still moving restlessly through her hair, “that I might take your last name instead. Is that weird? I don’t have to. But I love your family, May, and it makes just as much sense as you taking mine, so I don’t know why--”

                She leans up and kisses him. She can’t stop herself.

                “It’s perfect,” she tells him. “You’re perfect. I love you. Be Ben Parker. It’s a better name anyway.”

                “The best name,” he agrees, smiling dopey and relieved. “Ben Parker.”

 

\- - -

 

                Their wedding is planned for late February, and Rhodey’s the only person who tries to tell her to slow down. “You already live together,” he tells her, when he stops by on leave and spends an evening building LEGO spaceships with Peter. “Why rush things, May?”

                “Tax reasons, Rhodey. Obviously. Oh, and the insurance payout when I kill him in his sleep.” She cocks an eyebrow at him over the dinner she threw together from leftovers. She’s getting good at that. Properly domesticated, her mother would call it. She’d resent it, maybe, except Ben’s so quietly delighted by every bit of domesticity they manage, like he’s surprised and thrilled, every day, to find that he gets to wake up with a family.

                “May,” Rhodey says. He doesn’t quite fidget, but he also won’t meet her eyes. It’s strange, because, whenever he and Tony get into a disagreement, he always looks him right in the face. “Ben’s a great guy. I like him. But you’re twenty-one. You’ve known him for two years. How could you possibly know that you’re ready to spend the rest of your life with him?”

                Out of the three of them, Jim generally isn’t the cautious one. Tony, of course, is the most reckless, but May’s the one who dwells over safety systems and fallback plans and redundant protective measures.

                The difference between the two of them is that May believes in the fallibility of things and Rhodey believes in the fallibility of people.

                She doesn’t take it personally. He’s trying to protect her, and that’s a difficult thing to resent.

                “James,” she says, nudging his ankle under the table. “I’ve known you for three years, and I know I’m keeping you forever.”

                Rhodey’s face does something complicated. The smile he gives her is born as a flinch. But his eyes, when they finally meet hers, are warm and fond. “Okay, May,” he says. “But if it doesn’t work out, Tony’s family owns a dozen miles of empty coastline, and we can sink a body, no problem.”

                “ _Rhodey_ ,” she says, biting back a grin. “I’m from Queens. I can disappear a body.”

                He grins back at her. “Yeah,” he says, “who am I kidding? Of course you can.”

 

\- - -

 

                Their wedding is small. The guests mostly consist of her family and his fellow firefighters, and then Tony and Rhodey. Tony sneaks into the city like some kind of undercover agent. He refuses to stay at May’s place or with her parents, and she doesn’t really understand what any of it’s about, but she also doesn’t pay much attention. She’s a little distracted by the whole process of getting married.

                Howard Stark was not invited, but he sends gifts anyway. Tony looks thoroughly embarrassed by the small militia of bouquet-bearing florists that troop into the church, and he unwraps each of Howard’s three presents so he can pocket the business cards tucked into the boxes.

                “Christ,” Tony says, as he shreds the cards to pieces. “If you want a job, Mayday, apparently my dad’s hiring.”

                “Apparently so,” May says, as she surveys the wrecked wrapping paper. Howard sent the two most expensive things on their registry and a StarkTech computer that she’s reasonably certain hasn’t been released yet. “I’ll write him a thankyou note.”

                “Great,” Tony says with a grim nod. “Very thoughtful.”

                “Just don’t end up employed,” Rhodey advises. “I hear SI’s gunning for that neural implant contract with DARPA.”

                “Yikes,” May says.

                “Yep,” Rhodey agrees.  

                “Oh, sure,” Tony says, loyally if unenthusiastically rallying to SI’s defense, “when Robocop does it, it’s cool and progressive. But when SI starts planting tech in people’s brains--”

                “Hey, May,” Leo says, butting into the conversation with an expression of harried alarm, “your mom’s yelling about the table settings again.”

                “Oh, no,” May says. Her mother’s been in a low-grade state of panic all morning, like she thinks they’re storming Normandy instead of hosting a small afternoon wedding.

                Rhodey’s eyes flick between May and Leo and then he straightens up, neatens his tie, and slaps Tony on the back. “We’re in,” he says. “Let’s go, champ.”

               

\- - -

 

                The ceremony itself passes in a stuttering parade of crisp moments: Tony palming her a mini-bottle of her favorite tequila as she preps to walk down the aisle, Rhodey passing her a mini-bottle of mouthwash a second later; Ben’s face when he sees her, that starstruck, shining smile; tears on her dad’s face and a toothy grin of triumph on her mother’s; tiny, wobbly Peter in a suit with a determined expression, bearing two rings balanced on a small pillow. Clasped hands, and exchanged rings, and a kiss, and raucous cheering with Tony’s voice carrying over the crowd.

                The reception afterward is the best of all possible victory laps. She dances for what feels like hours, with champagne bubbling in her veins and love surrounding her on all sides.

                She dances with her father, and her husband, and with Tony and Rhodey.

                It’s a beautiful night. It’s perfect.

                There’s one moment in the middle, when she’s a little drunk and a bit exhausted and a lot overwhelmed, when she remembers that she danced with Richard at his wedding but never got the chance to dance with him at hers. She catches her breath, and it aches like an old wound, like something that broke and didn’t come back together right. But a second after that, Tony whirls into her and drags her into the next dance, and it’s fine.

                There will be, she knows, a whole lifetime of moments she doesn’t get to share with her brother. So she’ll just have to live them twice as hard, feel everything twice as deep, to make up for what he lost.

 

\- - -

 

                The picture, when it’s published, isn’t even particularly incriminating. Their body language is intimate but plausibly platonic. Tony has a hand on her back, fingers spread wide across her shoulder, and he’s leaning in to whisper a joke into her ear. May is holding her bridal bouquet down by her waist, and her free hand is reaching up to curl around Tony’s elbow.

                There’s nothing suggestive about it. But there’s something significant in their expressions.

                Tony’s eyes are lit up with mischief. He’s smiling sly and sweet. It’s a smile the media have probably never seen. Maybe that’s why they picked this photo. Maybe they think it’s a smile just for her.

                She shares that smile with Rhodey, but the world doesn’t know that.

                Her own expression is harder to see. She’s turned into Tony, shadowed by him, eyes downcast while she listens to the joke. The smile forming on her face looks inevitable, as bright and sure as dawn.

                They look like they love each other. May doesn’t think they look _in_ love, but she can see how an outsider might get confused. She can see why two separate trashy tabloids would see fit to run this picture on their covers.

                “May,” Tony says, when he calls, “I’m so sorry. It’s not gonna happen again, I promise.”

                May stares at the kitchen table, where Ben has carefully cut the offensive accusations away from the clearest of the two covers. He apparently plans to frame the picture, although his interior decorating instincts never seem to make it past _plan and clutter_.

                “I don’t care,” May says. She doesn’t, really. It’s like poking at a numbed limb. She knows she should feel something, but can’t quite work out what it is. “It’s funny, isn’t it? I’m sure there was a picture just like that with you and Rhodey.”

                “Yeah, but,” Tony flounders for a second. “May, it was your _wedding_. And these assholes are saying---”

                May rolls her eyes. “I don’t care what they’re saying.”

                And she doesn’t. She doesn’t give a damn what some reporters she’ll never meet insinuate about her in a trashy magazine most people know better than to read.

                But she does care, a little, that some of the people in her neighborhood seem to believe it. She cares that people whispered when she walked by them in the deli at lunch. She cares that the guys down at the station teased Ben about it this morning.

                “You want me to buy these places? Have them print a retraction?” Tony asks. “Dad says it never does any good, but I could still--”

                “You’re not going to buy some shitty tabloids, Tony,” May says. “Listen to yourself. You aren’t going to throw money at people for being terrible to you. That’s the opposite of solving the problem.”

                “I could buy them and then shut them down,” Tony offers.

                “Is that even legal?” May’s still staring at the picture. The worst part of this whole incident is that someone she knows sold the picture. Someone from her family, or someone from Ben’s work, or the photographer they hired. Someone saw this picture and decided that whatever payout they got was worth the hit to May and Tony’s dignity.

                Maybe that isn’t the worst part. Maybe the worst part is that if May had seen this picture in another context, she would have absolutely loved it.

                Maybe the worst part isn’t being watched, it’s being made to watch _herself_. Now that she’s seen how they look from an outsider’s perspective, she can’t quite get back into her own skin. She’s worried that she’ll forever be monitoring how they stand together, how they lean into each other, how they’re always in each other’s pockets. She’s worried that she’ll be so distracted by about how it looks that she won’t pay attention to how it feels.

                “Tell Ben I’m sorry,” Tony says. “I don’t—it’s been getting bad, but no one’s--- this is so shitty, May. This is unacceptable.”

                And it is, because these people don’t know them. The people who made money from suggesting that Tony’s the kind of man who’d hit on a bride at her wedding and May’s the kind of woman who’d allow it happen will never, ever have to look either of them in the face.

                “Ben doesn’t care,” May says. “He thinks it’s a nice picture. He says he’s going to frame it.”

                What he said, actually, was, “Do you want me to go down there and talk to these people?” and then, a minute after that, “Well, hell, May, _I_ don’t care. Tony didn’t mean anything by it. It’s not like it was Rhodes looking at you that way.”

                She hasn’t quite worked out what he meant by that last part. She’ll have to circle back to it eventually. It’s just that it feels somehow tectonic, like something that has the potential to shift the ground beneath her, and this whole day has been surreal enough already.

                “God bless and keep that man,” Tony says, with what sounds like genuine relief.

                May hates this. She hates that Tony feels like he needs to apologize. She hates the dissonance of looking at the picture and feeling love and affection and shame and hurt, twisted unnaturally together.

                “I love you, Tony,” she says. “You know this doesn’t change anything, right?”

                “Yeah, May,” he says. “I know that.”

                And she can’t tell, no matter how many times she plays it back in her head, which one of them sounds less like they actually believe it.

 

\- - -

 

                Tony used to visit once every month or two, but he stays clear until almost Thanksgiving. When he eventually comes by, he shows up with Rhodey and double-checks to make sure Ben will be there when they arrive.

                “How’s he doing?” May asks, when Tony and Ben have gone happily adventuring into the night to pick up dinner.

                Rhodey grimaces and then sighs. “The thing at the wedding,” he says, with an expressive twist of his lips. “It was like blood in the water. Have you been reading any of it?”

                “Of course not,” she says. Although that’s a lie. She _tries_ not to read any of it, but she scans the tabloid headlines whenever Tony’s name shows up. Twice now, she’s barely fought back the urge to take whole stacks home and burn them.

                She won’t give these people money for being cruel to Tony. She won’t.

                Rhodey shakes his head. He looks tired. He’s overworked, and she knows that, but it’s not the work that’s wearing him down. Rhodey thrives under looming deadlines and staggering workloads; he was born an Atlas. But worry drains him like a leech.

                “I just,” he says, “you know how Tony gets. Someone says something about him, and it’s like he has to prove them right. It’s like he thinks it can’t hurt him if he makes it true.”

                May’s noticed Tony’s getting thinner, noticed he isn’t sleeping. She’s been monitoring the way his projects are careening into territory that doesn’t always make sense.

                “He’s drinking too much,” she says. She shapes the words carefully. She’s been holding them inside for months, afraid of what’ll happen if she sets them loose, hoping that she’s wrong.

                Rhodey breathes out. His eyes are troubled. “I’m not sure it’s just drinking anymore, May."

                May closes her eyes. It was always a risk, and she knew that. Tony treats himself like an experiment in a lab, thinks there are no problems that can’t be solved by the proper application of math or physics or chemistry.

                His brain is a beautiful, wonderful thing, but May’s never once envied him for it. She knows what it costs him, living in a brain like that.

                “Okay,” she says. She reaches out, and Rhodey curls his hand around hers. They’re stronger together. They’re unstoppable together. “We can fix this. We can help him.”

                “Yeah,” he says, with a thin smile. “Of course we can.”

 

\- - -

 

                They don’t get a chance.

                Tony’s parents die in a car crash on December 16th, and Rhodey calls on his way to the airport, tells her to pack some clothes immediately, to be ready to pick him up in two hours.

                “Mayday,” he says, and it sounds less like a nickname and more like a call to arms. “He’s gonna need us.”

                “Yes,” she says. “Yeah.” Her hands and lips and heart have all gone numb, and it’s the strangest feeling. “I’ll be there.”

                She packs in a daze, calls her parents, calls Ben. She kisses Peter goodbye, covers his face in kisses, puts him in her mother’s arms, and then she’s leaving for the airport with her bag thrown in the backseat.

                She and Rhodey make it to Long Island around midnight, and they find Tony blackout drunk, tearing apart his father’s office for no reason he can articulate. “ _Fuck him_ ,” he says. He screams it at the top of his lungs, roars like something mortally wounded. “Fuck him for dying. Fuck him for doing this. _Fuck him_.”

                Rhodey takes the bottle out of Tony’s hands, and May takes Tony into her arms, and his hands tighten around her arms like he’s going to shove her away, but then he collapses, disintegrates into something small, and they stay like that, all three of them, curled up in the wreckage of Howard Stark’s office while Tony sobs into May’s neck like he won’t ever be able to catch his breath again.

 

\- - -

 

                The next day, the burned-out skeleton of Howard’s car is hauled into the garage. “Oh no,” May says, when she finds Tony standing in front of it, arms wrapped around himself, staring hard at the twisted, tortured crush of metal. “Tony, no. Don’t do this.”

                “Jesus, Stark,” Rhodey says. When he steps in front of Tony, he’s red-eyed and exhausted, but he looks immovable. “You aren’t doing this.”

                Tony swallows. He’s unsteady. His hands are shaking, and he threw up breakfast, and May held him all night, but it doesn’t feel like enough. It feels like, without their hands holding him together, Tony’s going to spill apart.

                “Please,” he says. He’s never asked them for anything. Not like he’s asking now. “I have to know. I have to understand. I have to—my dad was a good driver. He wouldn’t have—it wasn’t him, so it had to be the car. And if it was the car, I gotta know what went wrong. We have to fix it. This can’t happen to anyone else.”

                Rhodey and May exchange a long look. Everything in May aches. She’s horrified, on a visceral level, by the idea of letting Tony do this. It feels like standing aside while he does an autopsy on his own parents. It feels deeply, unthinkably wrong.

                But she knows what Tony’s brain will do to him if he doesn’t give it an answer. She knows how it’ll work and work, spin in endless circles. It’ll eat away at him, making him imagine the crash, over and over again, without rest, without resolution.

                “Please,” he says. “I have to.”

                Rhodey takes a deep breath. He looks at May, a question in his eyes, and, slowly, almost unwillingly, she nods back. She knows that there are wounds you have to lance, whatever the cost. She knows that, out of all of them, Tony is the most at risk to something like this festering, going rancid, ruining him from the inside out.

                “Okay,” Rhodey says. “Okay, Tony, we’re gonna help you. But not right now. Not yet. You can do this when you can hold down food, okay? You can do this when you’re _ready_.”

                “I’m ready, Rho--”

                “ _No_ ,” Rhodey says, sharp and certain. “We aren’t doing this just so you can fuck yourself up some more, Stark. We are gonna solve the problem if that’s something you need to do, but we’re gonna do it when we’re smart. We’re gonna do it when we’re ready. And none of us are ready right now.”

                Tony looks between them. He wavers on his feet. “I just—I need to do this while you’re here. You know accelerants better than I do. And May knows—she’s better at bodies. She’ll know when they—she’ll know what--”

                “We aren’t leaving,” May tells him. She cups her hands around his elbows and tugs him in. When he leans into her, his forehead feels warm against her shoulder, almost feverish. “Sweetheart, we’re here. We’ll help you.”

                “Don’t leave,” he says. His voice breaks right down the middle, jagged as splintered glass. “Don’t leave, May. I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m alone.”

                “You aren’t,” she says, leaning into him.

                “You aren’t,” Rhodey echoes, wrapping around him from the other side.

                Tony shakes between them, silent, and May would bear so much for him. She’d swallow his pain whole. But it’s stuck in his skin, knitted into his bones, and there’s nothing she can do for him but hold on.

 

\- - -

 

                On the day of the funeral, May and Rhodey stay within arm’s reach. The funeral itself is a grand bustling affair, and Tony weathers it with bloodshot eyes and squared shoulders, a surface-level smile and hundreds of handshakes. Afterwards, May and Rhodey take him back to visit the gravesite, just the three of them.

                Tony’s alone with his parents for a while, sitting in front of the freshly disturbed dirt and speaking too quietly for the two of them to hear. When he stands up, he seems better, like he bled off some of the poison. His eyes are wet, but there’s a new honesty to his misery, the weariness of the upward climb instead of the blind panic of the downward spiral.

                May takes his hands and kisses his forehead, and that’s the picture the tabloids run the next morning, because they have all the mercy of vultures on a fresh kill, and less than half of the humanity.

                “The hell with them,” May says, when Tony looks up from the breakfast table, stricken and apologetic.

                “Tacky pieces of shit,” Rhodey announces, with a truly harrowing amount of anger in his eyes.

                “Come on,” May says, standing up. The others follow her, falling in step. They have this, she thinks, even when they’re already lost so much. They have each other. Always.

                “We have work to do,” she says, and, with a resolution that costs almost more than she thinks she can bear, she turns toward the garage.


	6. Chapter 6

                There are problems with the car. Small issues, irregularities. May’s experience is with repairing cars, not autopsying them, and the fire burned hot enough and long enough that she’s not sure how much to blame on the heat exposure. Still, though. There are problems with the car.

                “How hot,” she asks, hooking the dust mask off her face, “do you think this got?”

                Rhodey glances over at her, sidelong and thoughtful. “Hot,” he says, which is undoubtedly accurate but not particularly helpful. He walks over, ducking underneath the car and staring up toward the front passenger’s side wheel well. “What’re you looking at?”

                She’s been studying this brake line for the past half hour. She noticed the oddity last night, and it’s been ticking in her head like a clock, insistent and relentless. Constant. “These are stainless steel,” she says. “And this is the only one that looks like that.”

                The damage – the uniqueness of it, the detail – is difficult to see. She’s been carefully cleaning the line with a damp toothbrush and compressed air, trying to get a better idea of what happened.

                Rhodey stares for a long moment. Tony, drawn by their silence, wanders over.

                “You think it was cut?” Tony asks, after they’ve all stood there for too long, staring at the brake line above them.

                May hesitates, but that part, at least, she knows. It wasn’t cut. “Not clean enough for a cut,” she says. “And it’s winter. Brake lines can rust in snow. It could be that it rusted, got weak, and then the fire ate through the weak point. Melted it.”

                The ends _look_ melted. When she runs her thumb carefully across the edges, they’re smooth. Mostly. There are parts, strange little filaments, that don’t quite lay flat.

                “Wouldn’t expect a fire like this to top 1500 degrees,” Rhodey says, slowly. “Ben would know more about car fires than I would.”

                “Stainless steel shouldn’t melt at that temperature.” Tony’s tensing up beside them. He reaches for the brake line, and May steps out of his way, lets him run his fingers along it. “Depends on the alloy, sure, but. Should hold to 2500.”

                “Could be it was rusted,” May repeats. “Or was starting to fray. It’d melt faster if--”

                “But just this one?” Tony turns, squints toward the brake line running to the passenger wheel. “You said the others were fine?”

                May nods. The official story is that Howard either swerved to avoid something in the road or didn’t brake in time for the turn. But Howard knew the roads, and wasn’t known for flinching. She’s believed, from the beginning, that the brakes were the most likely fail point.

                 “The others are fine,” she says. “But it can happen that way.”

                Tony rocks on his heels. He stares above him, at the hoisted remnants of the car his parents died in. “Diagonal split system,” he says. “So he’d lose power to the front passenger and back driver’s brakes?”

                “If it failed before the fire,” May says, “which we don’t know--”

                “And that would make the car pull left, yeah? So if it was frayed, if it started leaking fluid after he started driving, then--- he takes those turns so fast, you know? Mom always said. She’d always yell at him, but he was a good driver, so he never--- but he’d make it through a few stops and then--”

                “And then the brake fluid light would come on,” May says.

                Tony shrugs. “Unless it was sabotaged, too.”

                May and Rhodey exchange a long look. “We’ve got no proof,” Rhodey says, carefully, “that the line was sabotaged. Right, May? Maybe it was just weak. It could’ve been fully functional before the fire and then failed afterwards, right?”

                “Yes,” May says. “If it was already rusted, maybe. If it got hotter than we think. Could be chemical--”

                “But he’d pull let,” Tony says, “and he did.” His voice is soft; his eyes are unfocused, introspective. He’s chasing rabbits in his head again. “The car pulled left. Hit a tree.”

                May reaches over and carefully peels his fingers away from the brake line in his hand. “He would’ve had some control left, Tony,” she says. “And you said he was a good driver. It would’ve been tough to handle, but not impossible. He knew these roads. Even if it was sudden, even if he _was_ going too fast--”

                “Then _what_ , May?” Tony says, voice rising. “Even if _what_?”

                Rhodey shifts, draws Tony’s attention. “Hey,” he says. “Tones. C’mon, man. Don’t yell at her.”

                “I’m not--” Tony cuts himself off, drags a hand down his face. He needs to eat, needs to sleep. Needs to stop digging through the gutted remains of his father’s car. “I’m not yelling,” he says, and he’s being very careful to keep his tone neutral. “I’m just saying, it kinda looks like someone maybe murdered my parents.”

                “It’s not a cut, Tony,” May says. “It looks like it was starting to rust or maybe—I mean, maybe it looks frayed. _Tension_ frayed. I don’t know anyone strong enough to snap a brake line, Tony. Do you?”

                Tony wobbles, rocks onto the balls of his feet. He’s tense for another terrible second and then he breathes out. “No,” he says. “No, never mind, you’re right. Sorry.”

                “It’s okay,” May says, although she’s not sure that it is. She wishes the line looked like other lines she’d seen in the past. She wishes she could point to this one simple thing and give Tony a reason, some kind of answer.

                “I’m gonna,” Tony shakes his head, shrugs. “Gonna get something to eat. You two want anything?”

                “Not right now, Tones,” Rhodey says, watching him. “Thanks.”

                Tony nods, jerkily, and then sets off. May counts seconds until he’s been gone for a full minute and then she turns to Rhodey.

                “James,” she says, “I’ve been having this crazy thought, and I need you to tell me that it’s crazy so I can make it go away.”

                He raises his eyebrows. His eyes go to the garage door and then back to May. After a moment, he shifts so that, if Tony comes back in, he’ll see him walking up the hallway. “Okay,” he says. “What is it?”

                May swallows. She wraps her arms around herself and steps out from under the car to stare into the interior, right where Howard would’ve been sitting when it happened. ”Okay,” she says. “Say someone shredded the brake line. Just one, and not all the way. Say it heated up or got repositioned so it wore through as he drove. Fluid starts leaking, and Howard loses partial control. Say the car pulls, and he can’t stop, and he crashes.”

                “Sure,” Rhodey says. His voice is so calm and soothing, so free from the unsteady, breathless feeling that’s been rising in May’s chest. “Say that happens, May. _Is_ that what happened? Is that how they died?”

                “No,” she says. She wraps her arms tighter around herself. “I mean, _maybe_. Older car, no air bags. Could be the impact was strong enough to fold them forward, knock them out. Maybe they died on impact or didn’t wake up before the fire got to them. But, Jim, the steering column.”

                James hesitates. He glances back toward the door and then moves to stand beside her instead. She twists toward him, feints his way, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders immediately. “What about the steering column, May?”

                She leans into him, lays her head on his shoulder. “You’d expect—well, with an impact like that? An impact that’s going to kill two adults immediately? Where’s the force, Rhodey? The front crumpled, but it’s _meant_ to. It absorbed the impact. Steering column’s intact. Steering wheel wasn’t forced into the cab, didn’t break his ribs or pin him in.”

                Her eyes move over the wreck. She imagines, in her head, what it would look like. She builds the rest of the car on the bones she has left.

                “So they’re whiplashed, sure,” she says. “Maybe concussed. Could be broken legs, especially on the passenger side. But I don’t think—Rhodey, I don’t see an impact that would’ve killed them. Not both of them.”

                Rhodey’s arm tightens around her shoulder. “What’re you saying, May?”

                “I’m saying I don’t understand it,” she says. “I don’t understand what killed them.”

                “You think someone did this? Cut the brake line?”

                “No.” She hesitates. “I don’t know. I can’t—I’m not a forensic investigator, Rhodey. I don’t know any tool that could snap a brake line like that. _Cut_ one, yes. Saw through one, sure. Snap it? No. And if the brake line wasn’t intentionally tampered with, then it’s just an accident. But if it’s just an accident, why do they both stay in the car? Doors weren’t damaged in the crash. Dash wasn’t forced back. Door locks weren’t even engaged. I mean, _look_ at it, Rhodey. Driver’s side is wide open. Howard could’ve made it out, no problem.”

                Rhodey hums thoughtfully, studying the car. She wants him to tell her she’s crazy. She _feels_ crazy. She wants to give Tony answers, and all she can find, everywhere she looks, is more questions.

                “Okay,” Rhodey says, after a minute of reflection. “Okay, so. Brakes fail, maybe. Or maybe he’s been drinking. Maybe something’s in the road, and he swerves. He hits the tree. He’s not pinned in place, but he hits his head. So he’s out. Concussion, like you said. And maybe Maria’s awake, but the passenger side took more of the impact, right? Maybe she’s hurt, can’t get out on her own. He’s unconscious, and she’s hurt, and so—maybe it’s the smoke, May. The fire. They were older.”

                May can almost see it. People are fragile. She knows that.

                But Howard had always seemed so robust. And Maria, although delicate, had never seemed unsteady or frail.

                “Is that what I’m supposed to tell Tony?” she asks. “That the car crashed how it was supposed to, and they should’ve survived, but they just didn’t?”

                Rhodey breathes out. He’s the steady one, as always. Their lighthouse, the bedrock. She can see the wear points on him, though. The bloodshot red of his eyes, the tired haze he blinks away.

                “We tell him the truth,” Rhodey says, eventually. “All the little pieces of it that we have.”

                May doesn’t want to give Tony an ugly, thorny truth. She wants to give him an easy, simple lie; she wants to give him something he can fix. She wants to say _the brake line failed_ and let him invent something that never will. She wants to say _the chassis couldn’t handle the impact_ and watch while he designs something that could take any hit without crushing its passengers.

                “I’m not sure he’s strong enough for that,” she says. And it feels like a betrayal, like she’s throwing rocks at someone she loves.

                The truth is maybe _she’s_ not strong enough.

                She wants to keep Tony safe. She wants to clean him up, set him right, and get him on his feet again. She wants to throw a rope down and haul him out of the pit. She doesn’t want to hand him a shovel and tell him to keep digging.

                Rhodey gives her an assessing look that she can’t quite read. “I’m not sure either one of us knows how strong Tony is. I don’t think _Tony_ knows.”

                “Do you think it’s going to help him?” she asks. “Do you think it’s going to make him feel better? All he wants is an answer, Rhodey. There are _no answers_ here. There are too many variables. We’ll never know what happened. If we say the brake line rusted--”

                “Is that what you think happened?” Rhodey’s tone is patient, sympathetic. But there’s a wall in his eyes, a line he’s drawing. May’s baffled to find herself on the wrong side of it.

                “No,” she says, after a moment. “I don’t—it _could be_.”

                “May,” he says, “is that what you think happened?”

                “I don’t _know_ ,” May says. She pulls away from him, away from the car, gets halfway across the garage before she can make herself stop moving. “I just want to help him, James. You think letting him obsess over the idea that someone murdered his parents is going to _help_ him?”

                Rhodey crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn’t fidget, doesn’t shift, doesn’t move to come after her. “I think he’s going to obsess over that anyway,” he says. “I think he already is. I think he’s going to chase every possible way this could have played out, and I think the last thing he needs is to realize at some point that we kept anything back from him. I think, if he’s already launching himself into full on paranoid delusions, the _last thing_ we should do is give him an excuse to think we’re lying to him, too.”

                “Who’s lying?” Tony asks. He’s standing in the hallway with a cup of coffee in his hands. He’s wearing an MIT sweater that must be Rhodey’s, judging from the way the sleeves hang all the way past his knuckles. His hair is a mess, and he hasn’t slept in days, and he’s too thin, and too tired, and too spun up in too many different directions for any of this.

                “Paranoid delusions,” Tony adds, with a wry glance Rhodey’s way. “Nice.”

                Rhodey sighs. “Hey, Tones,” he says. It’s not an apology. That’s probably for the best.

                They’re on some kind of precipice. May can feel the ground shifting below her feet. Tony isn’t angry, but he’s watching them closely, expression shuttered and wary and exhausted.

                All May wants to do is give him something he can fix. An easy answer to a terrible question. He’s lost so much certainty. His parents are gone. Stane keeps stopping by the house to ask Tony in a million patient, kindly, manipulative ways when he’s coming to work, and May almost threw a croissant at him this morning for showing up with paperwork for Tony to sign when he was still too bleary-eyed to read it.

                She can’t protect him, and she knows that. Those early days of easy dangers are gone. She’d fight every frat boy on campus to protect him, but there are threats she can’t counter, and he was always going to have to grow up sometime.

                God help her, she wants to put herself between him and the world. But she knows – _has_ known, for years, since the day she realized how smart he is – that the world’s going to roll right over her and take whatever parts of him it can.

                She curls her hand tight around the Saint Albert medallion her gave her, when they were coming back from that sunlight, perfect week in Italy. She takes a deep breath.

                “Scout,” she says, carefully. Tony’s eyes flicker to hers with an ache in them that she almost can’t stand to look at. But she won’t look away, because this is all she can do for him. She can’t fix the world, and she can’t fix him, but she can stay with him while he burns himself out trying to do both. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

 

\- - -

 

                In the end, they can’t solve it. Not definitively. This isn’t the first time they’ve asked themselves a question they can’t answer, but this isn’t some engine Tony’s dreamed up or a chemistry problem they’ll have to mail off to some expert. They can’t call Bruce – that bookish, soft-spoken physicist Rhodey met at a conference three years ago – and ask him to check their math. This is Tony’s _parents_. And they can’t give him an answer.

                “It’s okay,” Tony says, on the evening of the fifth day.

                That’s all they can give him. No answer, no solution. Five days after the funeral. Five days away from the Air Force, five days away from Peter and Ben. And in five days, they haven’t solved it.

                “Tony,” May says. “I’m sorry--”

                “No,” Tony says. He waves her off. He’s anxious, high-energy, almost manic. He’s pacing more than usual. Obie stopped by again earlier with more updates about the stock drop, and Tony spent two full hours after he left just monologuing his way through a stream of consciousness that only sometimes made sense. “It’s okay, May. I know the next step.”

                May looks at Rhodey. He’s hunched over his takeout container, half-eaten pad thai going cold and sticky in front of him. The faster Tony talks, the slower Rhodey moves, so that now, at this point, Tony’s fidgeting half out of his skin and Rhodey looks like he might fall asleep mid-mouthful. 

                She is so incredibly tired. Even when she sleeps, she has nightmares about Tony or Peter or Rhodey or Ben or all four of them burning alive in a car, trapped. And she thinks she could have saved them, if she’d just figured it out, if she’d just _solved it_.

                The fire burned hotter than it should have. Or it didn’t.

                The brake line was frayed before the wreck. Or it wasn’t.

                The Starks were knocked unconscious by the crash. Or they weren’t.

                Her mind is a constant flowchart of _if/then_ that won’t stop looping, over and over. She knows what that means. There’s a variable missing. But, with all the information in front of them, with their minds working together, what variable could hide from them?

                All of this – _all_ of this – is them not solving for X.

                It doesn’t make any sense.

                “What’re you going to do, Tony?” she asks. Her voice is raspy and soft and hollow. She recognizes it from funerals. She thinks, idly, like it’s someone else’s life, that she’s too young to have been to so many funerals.

                Tony has his arms wrapped around himself. He’s stopped pacing, but now he’s rocking a little, from his heels to his toes and back, again and again.

                “It’s just math, May,” he says. “Math and variables and statistical likelihoods, right? But I can’t hold all of it in my head at once. Just gotta build a better brain.”

                “Tones,” Rhodey says. “What the hell does that mean?”

                Tony waves him off. He’s been doing that lately. It’s not quite a dismissal, but it represents a worrying regression. May remembers, a long time ago, when Tony spent too much time in his own head. She remembers how grateful he’d been when he’d started to realize he didn’t have to be alone in there anymore.

                It could just be that he’s tired. God knows they’re all exhausted. Or it could be that he’s building walls until he feels safe enough to leave them.

                But May doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like him pulling away from them. She knows what happens to Tony when he’s alone.

                “I appreciate it,” Tony says. “Both of you. I mean it. Coming out here so quickly, and staying with me. You’ve both—I couldn’t.”

                He pauses. He rocks. He looks like he wants to fall apart but has decided, somehow, that he isn’t allowed to anymore. “I couldn’t ask for better friends,” he says, finally.

                And May has no idea why, couldn’t pinpoint it for the life of her, but there’s something pained and lonely in his voice, something that makes his awkward little speech sound like a goodbye.

 

\- - -

 

                Rhodey goes back to the Air Force. May goes back to Queens. And Tony goes back to MIT to ruthlessly finish off an impressive collection of degrees and to build an AI system called JARVIS that is tasked, among other things, with running simulations of his parents’ car crash over and over until it can settle on the most likely series of events.

                “Bit grim,” JARVIS acknowledges, when May first meets him. “But a noble purpose, I believe.”

                “Yeah, thanks, J,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. “Dial it down, okay? May’s gonna love you just for keeping me to some kind of schedule.”

                “I do my best, sir,” JARVIS says.

                “Oh, Tony,” May says, not even trying to hold back her smile, “he’s incredible. You’re incredible, JARVIS.”

                “Thank you, Ms. Parker.” And, somehow, JARVIS even manages to sound charmed.

                She’s back in Cambridge for Tony’s graduation. Ben had to work, but the Air Force, fretting over the state of all their SI contracts, was happy to send Rhodey, hoping that he’d join the endless parade of people trying to manipulate Tony into going to work.

                For his part, Rhodey mostly seems happy to carry Peter around on his shoulders and pretend to be a rocket ship while Peter giggles madly and holds on for dear life.

                “Anyway,” Tony says, with a fond smile toward JARVIS’ servers, “he’s helpful.”

                “He’s incredible,” May repeats, still awed.

                Tony ducks his head and grins down at his shoes, and, for a second, it’s like they’re young again. But when his chin lifts, his eyes are distracted and the wattage of his proud smile has dimmed. “Well,” he says, “not very profitable, though.”

                Rhodey groans from across the room. “C’mon, Tones,” he announces. “I told you not to go those shareholder meetings.”

                “They send me the minutes,” Tony says, snapping it with a little more irritation than May thinks is entirely called for. “I get emails, Rhodey. And if I ignore those, people _hand-deliver_ them. Paper! Stacks of _paper_. I’ve got all this—it piles up around my house.”

                “Sounds like you need to keep a recycling bin by the door,” Rhodey volleys back, juggling Peter’s feet while Peter cackles from his shoulders.

                Tony rolls his eyes. “Last time,” he says, tone winding toward aggrieved, “they sent over a guy they were laying off because SI has lost so much money. On his _last day_ , they send him--”

                “A recycling bin,” Rhodey repeats, “and a personal assistant. Don’t let them bully you, Tony. You’re gonna make them money your whole life. You don’t have to start now.”

                Tony huffs out a breath. He’s staring at JARVIS’ servers again, but all the quiet pride from before is gone. “Whatever, Rhodes,” he says. “You don’t have this kind of responsibility.”

                There’s a tight, tense moment where Rhodey’s face flickers to annoyance and then he shakes his head, laughs, and twists his head to stare up at Peter. “Hear that, Petey? Uncle Tony thinks I’m a joke. Isn’t that funny?”

                Peter grins, sunshiney and sweet. “You’re funny, Uncle Jim.”

                Tony’s anger burns right out of him, and he’s left looking stricken and worn. “Hey,” he says. “Rhodey. That’s not what I said.”

                Rhodey looks over at Tony. May chews on her lip, tries to decide if she needs to intervene. Tony and Rhodey fight sometimes, bicker and squabble and elbow each other around. It’s fun, until it isn’t. They don’t mean it, until they do.

                “Tony,” Rhodey says, sounding tired, “I’m here to celebrate you. Okay? Congratulations. I’m proud of you. But I’m also here because the Air Force wants you to make weapons, and you need to understand that I’m not the only person you’re gonna talk to today who was sent to accomplish a mission. Damn near everyone around you from now on is gonna want something from you. You have to be ready for that.”

                Tony fidgets. His hands twist up at his sides and then he shoves them in his pockets. When he smiles, it’s the press smile May’s been seeing from magazine covers for months. “I appreciate the advice, Rhodey,” he says, “but everyone around me has wanted something from me my whole life.”

                “Watch your mouth,” Rhodey says, eyebrows pulling together. “Watch your mouth when you talk about May Parker like that. You and me, we’re a bit more complicated now. But she’s been on your side since she tried to fight Derrick Cleburne freshman year.”

                “Okay,” May says. She claps her hands and then goes to take Peter, breaking the line of sight between Tony and Rhodey and disrupting the tension by setting Peter down next to Tony’s other new invention, a robot he’s named DUM-E.

                While Peter and Rhodey entertain DUM-E, May circles closer to Tony, kisses him on the cheek. “We really _are_ proud of you,” she says, because she’s not sure anyone besides the pair of them will remember to say it to him. “You’re my favorite prodigy.”

                “Bullshit,” Tony says. “I’ve got nothing on Petey.”

                May rolls her eyes and knocks her elbow into his side. He’s too skinny again. Nobody’s been dragging him to late night diners to fed him his body weight in pancakes. It’s anybody’s guess when he last ingested any kind of vitamin or nutrient at all.

                “Hey, J,” she says, “we should talk about Tony’s nutrition plan.”

                “Delighted to do so, Ms. Parker,” JARVIS chimes back immediately.

                Tony groans, theatrically, but he reaches down to take her hand, weaves his fingers through hers. He holds on tighter than usual. She wonders if he needs it. She wonders when someone last hugged him or held his hand or wrapped him up in their arms on a long walk back from an all-nighter in a lab.

                “He’s right, you know,” Tony says. He tips his chin toward Rhodey, and there are layers of irritation and defensiveness and confusion, but she can see fondness, too, and begrudging resignation. “You and Rhodes are the only ones who ever really wanted what’s best for me. Wanted me to be the best version of me. You made me want that, too.”

                “Tony,” she says. She tightens her hand in his. She kisses him on the cheek again. She wants to wrap her arms around him and rock him the way she rocks Peter when he’s had a fall or a disastrous mishap with his LEGOs. “I just want you to be happy.”

                He smiles. It’s bitter and cynical, and she wants to know who the hell taught him that. “Not much money in happiness, May,” he says.

                That’s Stane voice in Tony’s mouth. She’s going to bareknuckle box him the next time she sees him. If she asks nicely, Rhodey will probably hold his arms behind his back for her while she does it.

                “I don’t know,” she says, looking at Peter. “I do alright.”

                Tony smiles wider. He leans his whole body into her, just for a second, like he’s trying to absorb something through her skin. And then he pulls away, untangles their fingers, and she’s left feeling untethered, cut loose.

                “I’m glad,” he says, his eyes going to the stacks of paper on his desk, all those reports he thinks he has to read, all the work other people want him to do. “I’m glad for you, May. I really am.”


	7. Chapter 7

                They drift apart the way continents do. Slowly, over time. It’s tectonic and inevitable, unstoppable. Their differing orbits send them spinning in opposite directions; they’re dragged apart by the momentum of their lives.

                In the beginning, May sees Tony every couple of months. He works mainly in Malibu now, but he flies out to New York regularly enough for charity galas and tech expos and publicity events. For a while, she and Rhodey are his alternating plus ones. Tony takes Ben a couple of times too, flies him out in his private jet to Malibu so he can be his date to a couple of public safety-oriented charity galas.

                The party invites arrive less and less frequently. The press, May knows, is the problem. Ever since they latched onto the idea of Tony and May as some kind of secret couple, they can’t ever seem to let it go. Every party they attend together is followed with cherry-picked photographs under suggestive headlines. Every single one.

                May doesn’t like it, but she’ll pay the price of admission, if that’s what it costs to spend an evening with her friend. Ben laughs every time, so it doesn’t cause her any problems, but Tony’s sensitive to things like that. He’s overprotective of the people he loves. It’s an overcorrection hardwired into him, a direct reaction against the way his parents failed him.

                She should fight him on it, and she knows that. But she’s busy. She has Peter, and Ben, and the garage. She has responsibilities and obligations. She has a whole life. And the further they get from MIT, the less her world overlaps with Tony’s.

                But even as she spends less and less time in it, there are still aspects of Tony’s life that May loves. The champagne-tinted glitter of his parties, the growing public realization that he’s one of the brightest minds of their generation. The way he can bring life into rooms just by walking into them, the breathless buzz that builds when he’s unveiling yet another technological marvel.

                The whole world is finally realizing how special he is. They’re late, but that’s alright. She’s glad they finally noticed.

                But she worries. She’s with him in the limos, after the party’s over. She sees the tired way he slumps, silent and thin, staring out the window with an emptiness to his eyes that she’s never seen before. He’s surrounded by sharks, but he’s so sweet, so earnest in his need to be liked.

                “You’re a red panda in a snake pit,” she tells him, once, after a particularly difficult gala where everyone was flawlessly beautiful and endlessly ambitious. She spent the whole night barely breathing in a dress stitched to be too-tight, snacking on endless trays of tiny foods, surrounded by wealthy people who all hummed with a dangerous, starving kind of hunger.

                All night, she watched Tony over the top of her ever-filling champagne flute, watched him giving pieces of himself away to people who were never satisfied, who only ever wanted more.

                She’s holding his face in her hands. His eyes are bloodshot. He’s been drunk since they left his Malibu mansion, and she caught up with him sometime around midnight, when two blondes in glorified lingerie crowded Tony into a corner and slid their phone numbers right into the front pockets of his pants.

                “Mayday,” he says, quiet and amused. He looks at her like this, sometimes. Like she’s a child. Like he wants to protect her from something.

                She doesn’t like the changing dynamic of their friendship. She doesn’t like the changing pattern of their lives. She can’t protect him from threats like this. These things start inward and grow out, a cancer she can’t cure. When the threats are under his skin, she can’t protect him.  

                “A red panda,” she says, tracing the delicate line of his cheekbone with her thumb. He’s sweet and good and perfect, and she’s watching the world eat him alive. Every time she sees him, there’s a little bit less left.

                “I’m not a red panda,” he tells her. “Magpie, everything’s fine.”

                She pulls him in, rests his head against her shoulder. He laughs, soft and indulgent, nuzzles in like it’s a joke.

                She knows, and maybe she always did, that she can’t save him from the life he thinks he needs to lead. It doesn’t always hurt this much.

                _Growing pains_ , she thinks, wrapping her arms around him.

                “You have to take care of yourself,” she says.

                “Mayday,” he says, voice muffled against the bare skin of her shoulder, one hand settling on her back, fingers sliding on the expensive silk of the latest gown he’s bought her. She can’t afford the entry fees to the circus he lives in now. Maybe she never could. Maybe she was always going to be forced out. “I always take care of myself.”

                He never does. He doesn’t know how.

                There will be a day when she can’t do it for him anymore. She’s heartbroken, holding on too tight, because she thinks maybe that day’s already come and gone, and she didn’t know to mark it.

 

\- - -

 

                Ben dies in late spring, his favorite time of year, and May is furious with him, because he had no business getting in the middle of yet another fight. She told him, over and over again, that someday someone was going to call his bluff. Someday, she told him, someone was going to realize that, under all that height and strength, he was just a gentle, harmless man.

                And then someone did, and he was stabbed to death two blocks from their apartment. And there was no comfort in being right.

                She’s furious with him for the first twenty-four hours and then she is nothing, whatsoever, until she looks up and finds herself standing in front of a church with Rhodey beside her, waiting to attend Ben’s funeral.

                “What,” she says, blinking back tears that rise out of nowhere. Rhodey’s hand curls around hers, and she holds tight, closing her eyes until she finds her footing. “Where’s Tony?”

                “Oh, shit. May, he didn’t…” Rhodey frowns and then shrugs, helpless. “He didn’t think he should come. Didn’t want a bunch of paparazzi camped out. Those fucking tabloids-- if he shows up, they’ll just say---”

                “Say what?” May glares at the line of cars and the mass of strangers and the uniformed firefighters, at all these nice people who are going to go home to their families once this is over.  “Say he’s sad that his friend is dead?”

                Rhodey sighs. He’s a fighter pilot now. Combat missions. She tries to remember if he always looks this tired.

                “May,” he says, jaw tight and eyes narrowed. Braced. And that’s something she’s always appreciated about Rhodey. Tony will try to make things better, but Rhodey will always tell her the truth.

                She used to think of him as their lighthouse, she remembers. But that was back before she really knew what it was like to be lost at sea.

                Maybe he’s the same now, though. Maybe there’s something like a promise in the steadiness of his shoulders, the wary attention in his eyes. _You’re in danger. You’re lost. But, if you can get to me, you’re safe._

                 “They’ll probably say he’s glad the competition’s gone,” Rhodey says. “There’s still that rumor, you and Tony. They’re never gonna drop it.”

                May blinks. “That _is_ terrible.” And it is, of course, but in a way that can’t really touch her right now. If you cut deep enough, she thinks, you kill the nerve. She can’t worry about her reputation when she’s bleeding out right here, on the steps of her parents’ church with Ben’s body behind her.

                 “But I don’t care,” she says. “I want Tony here. You and I can’t carry our side of the coffin without him. We need a third. We need him.”

                Rhodey, shoulders squared, gives her a look that is only a little doubtful. “You sure you want to be a pallbearer? Those firemen would be happy to---”

                “I can carry him,” May says, a little louder than strictly necessary. She clears her throat. The anger is back, but so are the tears. She holds tighter to Rhodey’s hand; he feels like the only steady thing in the universe. “I can carry him,” she says again, quieter, “if you two help me.”

                “I’ll call him.” Rhodey’s hand is tight in hers. “He’ll be here, May, I promise.”

                “Good,” she says. “We’re in the first pew.” She takes a deep, steadying breath and holds onto Rhodey for another handful of seconds, and then she pulls away. “I need to go check on Peter.”

 

\- - -

 

                She can’t quite function, after the funeral. She keeps losing the thread of things. It’s like some integral part of her was taken out and left somewhere, buried with Ben in his casket. She’ll wake up in the morning and make breakfast and then sit for hours at the table, coffee gone cold, staring at nothing. It’s like she’s running a program that needs a command to continue, like she can’t make it past the breakfast table without Ben pressing a lazy morning kiss to the top of her head.

                She does her best to focus on Peter, who’s lost his parents and now his uncle, who’s brave and strong but just a kid, who spends quiet hours going through Ben’s things, wears his flannel shirts around the apartment, cries at night when he thinks May can’t hear him.

                Her family closes ranks, but it’s not enough. Rhodey comes by when he can, but it’s not enough. There’s no correcting this kind of flight pattern. She’s earthbound. It’s a feedback loop of static, cascading failures and frozen windows, error screens smearing across her brain.

                Tony shows up two weeks after the funeral with a moving truck and an army of polite young men who won’t stop putting her things in boxes. “We aren’t fighting about this,” Tony tells her. “I’ve already talked to your parents. I’ve talked to Rhodey. You’re gonna come stay with me for a while.”

                “I can’t just leave,” May says. Peter hasn’t clung to her like this in years, but he can’t seem to stop right now. He’s crowded up next to her, silently watching all these strangers in their home. He’s folded up the sleeves of Ben’s shirt four times, and they still hang past his knuckles. “ _Tony_. You can’t just--”

                “There’s not a lot I can’t do, Magpie,” Tony says. It’s that slick, self-assured voice she hates. She wants, suddenly and inexplicably, to slap him across the face.

                She tears up instead, eyes stinging like somehow she’s slapped her own face instead, like her body’s rejecting the idea of hurting Tony so harshly that it’s handing her the sensation of it. Like hurting Tony, somehow, is hurting herself. Like they’re linked.

                But there are no links. Nobody’s tied to anyone. Nobody keeps anyone. In the end, it’s all just frayed strings and entropy and a closet full of clothes that don’t fit anyone who lives here.

                “May,” Tony says. His expression softens. He looks young again, and she hates him, just a little, because she never learned how to say no to that face. “Just a couple days, come on. Just let me get the two of you out of here for a weekend.”

                “Stop putting my things in boxes,” she says. “Stop putting _Ben’s_ things in boxes. He’s not—you can’t--”

                “Okay,” Tony says, stepping back, hands up. “No more packing. We’ll leave everything as it is. You guys can buy whatever you need when we get there.”

                “I can’t just _go_ ,” she says. But she can. There’s nothing holding her here. She hasn’t shown up for a shift at the garage since Ben died. She feels like she’s suffocating, like every morning she wakes up and there’s less and less air to breathe.

                Peter starts school in the fall, but that’s months away.

                She’s been living in a tomb. It doesn’t feel right to leave, but there’s no room for anything alive in this place. It’s a vise, ever-tightening.

                And Peter deserves better than this.

                “I can’t,” she says and then takes a deep breath. “Tony, I’m not at my best right now. My family—I can’t look after Peter on my own. My parents usually take him during the day.”

                “I’m okay,” Peter says, stubborn and loyal and too small for these kind of heroics. “Aunt May, we’re okay.”

                Tony crouches down, kneeling on her dusty kitchen floor in his perfectly tailored pants, his expensive shoes carefully navigating the scattered LEGOs. When he opens his arms, Peter lets go of May, throws his arms around Tony’s neck, and clings like a storm-tossed limpet when Tony rises up, holding him close.

                “Come to Malibu for the weekend,” Tony says. He’s so steady, in that moment, looks like he could hold Peter for hours. He looks like he could bear her weight, too.

                She’s been stitching herself up, but every punch of the needle aches like something terminal. Every morning she wakes up to another day without Ben.

                He promised her his whole life. And he never, ever broke a promise to her. But his whole life wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. She’d been relying on so much more.

                She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. Her eyes are aching again. She cries too much.

                “Okay,” she says. “Okay, Tony, the weekend.”

 

\- - -

 

                It’s such a strange thing, recognizing her own caretaking behaviors echoed back at her. She sees flashes of Rhodey, too. Even Ben, in the solicitous way Tony refuses to let her carry her own bags, in his insistence on feeding them food he cooked himself. And the stubborn scowl he gives to Stane, the terse shutdowns he delivers over the phone whenever anyone calls him about work, that’s her cousin Leo, declaring his allegiance by outlining who’s on the wrong side of it.

                They taught him this, she realizes. Her, and Rhodey, and Ben, and her family. They taught him how to take care of people.

                She’s worn thin. Every part of her feels bruised. She cries when Tony makes her tea, which is ridiculous and stupid and pointless. It’s just that Ben used to, and now he won’t ever again.

                “I know, Magpie,” Tony says. He leans into her. They’re standing in his perfect kitchen at midnight, the sharp-shining stainless steel one he probably never even used before she crash-landed into his mansion by the sea with her nephew and her fresh grief, and she’s crying those silent, shaking sobs she’s trained herself into because Peter will get upset if he hears crying.

                It’s just a cup of tea.

                It’s just a dead husband and a whole life left to live without him.

                She’s too young to be hauling the weight of so many dead.

                She takes a deep breath, so deep her lungs ache with it. She’s alive, and he isn’t, and it isn’t fair, but that doesn’t matter. Her fingers scramble on the marble countertops, can’t get purchase.

                This is the way it happens, sometimes. She’s fine for hours, and then it’s like every nerve in her body starts firing off junk signals, fills her brain with a deafening pulse of alarm bells. She can’t breathe.

                “Come on,” Tony says. His fingers wind through hers. He’s holding on so hard that it hurts, but everything hurts, and at least his hand is warm in hers. “Come on, let’s go to the lab. I’ll show you what I’m working on. It’s gonna be okay, Mayday. We’re gonna be okay.”

                And that, of course, is the only caretaking tactic that Tony’s known since they met. It’s the one he taught himself.

                _Distract, distract, distract_. _Build, build, build_.

                But the whole world’s been coming apart for weeks. Maybe she’d liked to build something. Maybe creation is an act of defiance. Maybe she misses the part of her that built any damn thing at all.

                “Okay,” she says. She takes another breath, shallower, more in control. “Okay,” she says, again.

                She takes the tea with her. It’s good tea, and he made it for her.

                People come and go so quickly. She can’t waste any gifts he gives.

 

\- - -

 

                It’s supposed to be a weekend. Three months in, the press have worn themselves out publishing scandalous insinuations about her character. Her mother reports that her cousin Leo has been in five separate bar fights because people who’ve known May her whole life won’t stop calling her a whore. Even little Ollie, Leo’s baby brother, has busted his knuckles defending May’s honor.

                She should care more than she does. She’d like to see any of the people back home pick themselves up after something like this. When the universe knocks your teeth out of your mouth, she doesn’t see how anybody has any Goddamn right to judge you for the way you crawl your way back to your feet.

                And, anyway, she’s not sleeping with Tony. Honestly, the two of them aren’t doing much sleeping at all.

                “You gotta be careful, May,” Rhodey says, when he visits.

                “I’m doing great, James,” May says. “Thanks.”

                Rhodey grimaces. He’d shown up at nine in the morning to find both of them passed out on the couches down in Tony’s basement lab. Peter had been up, sitting at the breakfast table with his sitter, who’s a lively brunette named Isobel who’s double-majoring in Biochemistry and Physics and has been teaching Peter how to solder.

                “You both look like shit,” Rhodey tells her. He pauses, takes a drink of his coffee. Gives May a sidelong, considering look. “But I’m glad you’re doing better.”

                “Wow,” she says. “I look like shit, but I’m doing better?”

                She means it as a joke. The look that passes over Rhodey’s face – tense and grim and almost haunted – saps the smile off her face.

                “I knew you were gonna pull together,” Rhodey tells her. “I knew you would, because of Peter. But you looked like a dead thing walking, May.”

                She’d _felt_ like a dead thing walking. Or like a chrysalis after the butterfly’s flown off. Like something desiccated and hollow. Some dry abandoned husk, something intentionally set aside, with all its good days behind it.

                “I’m sorry,” she says. She’s careful navigating her way around the words. “If I scared you. Or—I don’t know. Worried you, I guess.”

                He frowns and shifts, takes another restless sip of coffee. He throws a glance over his shoulder, back toward where Isobel and Peter and Tony are sprawled on the kitchen floor, soldering the circuit board Peter’s been working on.

                “Mayday,” he says. And he doesn’t usually use the nickname. He’s always preferred _May_ , especially as they get older. “I’m glad you’re doing better. You know I am. But it’d be real easy to stop here, and you gotta keep getting better. _That’s_ what worries me.”

                Rhodey always tells her the truth. Usually, she appreciates it.

                “Rhodey,” she says, closing her eyes, reaching for patience. She’s tired. She doesn’t sleep enough. Every night, after she puts Peter to bed, she and Tony stay up working until one of them passes out. Sometimes they pass out midsentence. It was easier, she thinks, when they were in college. But they had fewer obligations back then.

                “Stay as long as you need to,” Rhodey says. His tone is gentle. His eyes are worried. There’s no reason to be angry at him, and the fact that she is indicates that he’s telling her something she already knows and doesn’t want to hear. “I mean it, May. You scared the shit out of me after Ben died. And Tony would be happy to have you here forever. But if you’re gonna walk out on your whole life, you gotta at least stop paying rent on the old place.”

                She isn’t paying rent. Tony is.

                It started as a favor, just a way to make things easier for May back when every tiny thing was too hard to manage. He took care of a lot of things while she was dragging herself back to functional. And now, somehow, it’s just been easier to let him keep taking care of things.

                Rhodey’s right. He usually is.

                This isn’t sustainable. This isn’t what she wants.

                “I need to stay,” she says. “I can’t go home yet.”

                She can’t even think about it. All of Ben’s clothes still hanging in the closet. His toothbrush on the bathroom counter. She’d burn the bridge back to her old life, if she could. Cauterize the wound before it gets any deeper.

                But that’s not how this works. She has a whole life, just waiting.

                “Okay,” Rhodey says. And then he reaches over, hooks her forgotten coffee cup closer, presses it gently into her hand. “Jesus, May. Take as much time as you need.”


	8. Chapter 8

                It’s an easy thing, losing time at Tony’s house. She thinks he unintentionally designed it that way. Or maybe it’s just something he learned from his father, this instinctive automation of less interesting tasks.

                The housecleaners come by when they’re out, and the chef cooks quietly in the kitchen, leaves meals on the table or stored neatly in the fridge. When May cooks her own breakfast, the chef doesn’t show up until noon or later. When she stays in Tony’s house all day, the housecleaners don’t arrive until the middle of the night, to clean while she’s asleep.

                There is nothing, she realizes, to distract her. No reason to leave the house. Nothing she wants that can’t be delivered silently while her back is turned and left behind on the kitchen island, or her bedside table, or down in the lab.

                It’s eerie. It takes some adjustment.

                She _does_ adjust though. Gradually and then completely, to the point where people move around her, unseen, unacknowledged, constantly working to make her life easier, and she doesn’t even think about them until she faceplants in her bed after a long night of working in the lab and wakes to find her clothes are clean, and her groceries are packed away, and the brand of coffee she likes is percolating down in the kitchen, coffeemaker activated by JARVIS the moment she blinks awake.

                “Well, what’s the problem, Mayday?” Tony asks, when she brings it up over breakfast.  “You want to—what? See them? Meet them?”

                “No, I don’t--” May waves him off. She _has_ met them, she thinks. Most of them. Some of them. The handful that she wandered into, back before JARVIS learned her patterns well enough to maneuver the staff around her. “I don’t want to interrupt their work. I’m just not—they aren’t a _secret_ , Tony.”

                “Who made them a secret?” Tony reaches across the table to help Peter with his grapefruit. “Here, Petey, you gotta—yeah, like that. Kinda cut it up a bit. Sometimes you gotta work for your citrus. It’s good for you. A little early morning problem solving, right? Plus, scurvy’s the least attractive of all the traditional seafaring diseases.”

                Peter throws a quick, sunny grin Tony’s direction, and Tony stutter-stops in that way he does sometimes when Peter’s too obviously adoring. Like a switch flips in Tony’s brain, and he has to reboot the whole system.

                “Thanks, Uncle Tony,” he says.

                “You got it, kiddo,” Tony says, after he recovers from the half-second delay.

                “It’s just weird,” May says. “I mean, I don’t care how they do their jobs, obviously. It’s up to them. But it’s okay if I _see_ them, Tony. They know they don’t have to hide, right? Don’t they?”

                Tony furrows up his brow and gives her a considering look. “You getting a bit lonely, Magpie? Want me to see if Rhodey can come out for a long weekend? Oh, hey, I’ve got another gala coming up. Wanna be my date?”

                May takes a long drink from her banana-chocolate smoothie. They started appearing beside her breakfast plate a little over a week ago. She’s usually the only one who gets them. Tony gets something alarmingly green, and Peter’s smoothies seem mostly berry-based. Hers is the only one with a slightly chalky aftertaste that she thinks might be protein power.

                Her meals are usually a bit heavier than Tony’s. She thinks JARVIS might be trying to fatten her up.

                Well. She _has_ lost weight. It’s been a hell of a year.

                It’s a little odd, like inverted nostalgia. She spent so much time in college trying to find ways to get more calories and nutrients into Tony, and now he’s designed an AI that’s doing the same thing to her. Like he replicated her behavior patterns when he was designing his ideal assistant.

                Maybe it’s not so odd. If she were to sit down and design her own ever-present AI minder, she imagines it would share quite a few of Tony’s traits.

                “May?” Tony tips his head to the side. His expression is wandering past confused and into concerned. “Did you want to go with me to the gala, or should I ask someone else?”

                She should ask when the gala is, probably. But the truth is that it hardly matters. Once she agrees, JARVIS will generate a gallery of dresses that match the event’s dress code and her preferences. She’ll pick one out of the lineup, and it’ll arrive, tailored to her measurements, in a number of days. There’s a very high likelihood that she’ll never even see the people who deliver the dress to her closet.

                “Of course I’ll go with you,” she says. “I just think maybe it’d be good for you to have a bit more human interaction in your everyday life.”

                Tony blinks at her. His expression clears and softens. “Mayday,” he says, “why would I need anyone else when I’ve got you and Pete?”

 

\- - -

 

                May remembers what Rhodey told her. She remembers that conversation in her apartment, back before Ben died. Before Tony’s parents died. _He’s drinking too much_ , she’d said. And Rhodey had given her a troubled, worried look and said, _I’m not sure it’s just drinking anymore, May._

                She’d had faith, back then, that they could help him. Back then, Tony hadn’t had many problems that they couldn’t cure or control or counteract. But, soon after her talk with Rhodey, everything spun out of her hands, and it’s only now, at this moment, when she catches Tony’s gaze across the room at the latest gala and gets the weird, wrong, shivery idea that someone else is looking at her through Tony’s eyes that she remembers what Rhodey told her.

                _I’m not sure it’s just drinking anymore_.

                She knows what Tony looks like when he’s drunk. Blurred around the edges, loose smiles, easy affection. He’s excitable when he’s tipsy, and brave, and fond of adventures. He likes fried snacks and holding hands and making people laugh. The drunker he gets, the lazier he gets. If he drinks too much or drinks for the wrong reasons, he can nosedive into melancholy.

                This, though, is something else. This is sharp-edged and manic. May lost Tony when she went to hunt down another glass of champagne and Tony – sleepy-eyed from late nights in the lab, listing and sloping and complaining that coffee had finally failed him – had wandered up to some dark-haired man he seemed to know and smiled ruefully up at him.

                In hindsight, that was the first indication that Tony was about to do something he knew May wouldn’t have approved of. Tony loves showing May off at these parties. If he’s talking to someone he hasn’t introduced her to, there’s most likely a reason.

                “Well, that’s disappointing,” Stane mutters, as he steps up by her elbow and frowns across the room at Tony.

                May curls her fingers carefully around the delicate stem of her champagne flute. “Is he--?” She can’t make herself say it, which is absurd. She’ll have to confront him about it later. She’d better find a way to make the words feel like they belong in her mouth.

                _Is he high_? she thinks. Her next thought is, _Will he be sober by the time we get home?_

                Because Peter’s at home. And Isobel will put Peter to bed long before they make it back from the party, but Peter’s a light sleeper. Peter _worries_. Peter wakes up sometimes and wanders out of his bed to make sure they’ve made it home.

                Stane makes a face. “He hasn’t done this since you moved in.”

                Which means that he used to do it regularly. Which means that Stane knew and never told her.

                She focuses on the careful pressure of her hand around her glass. It’s the only way she’s going to hold herself back from throwing the whole thing in Stane’s face. “So he used to do this a lot,” she says. Her tone isn’t nearly as polite as it should be. “And you, what? Said nothing? Did nothing?”

                “I talked to him about it,” Stane says. He’s holding a tumbler of what is probably Scotch in his hand, sipping pensively as he watches Tony flit around the gala, deliberately avoiding both of them. “I thought, if it got worse, I’d call you. But then you moved in.”

                May stares at Tony. He won’t look back at her. “I moved in,” she repeats, “and he stopped.”

                Stane shrugs. He looks over at her, sidelong and knowing, which is how he usually looks at her. When he smiles, his eyes don’t stay on her face. She thinks, in the future, she might reconsider the necklines on her dresses.

                “He’d do anything for you,” Stane tells her. It doesn’t sound sweet, when he says it. It sounds like something he resents.

                “I’d do anything for him,” she says. Just so they’re clear. Just so Stane understands that it’s not uneven, what she and Tony have. Reporters make all sorts of allegations about her, based on the wealth disparity between them, but she’s never loved Tony because of what he could buy her. She has never cared – not once – abut his money.

                Although she’s using far more of it now than she ever has in the past.

                “Come on, May,” Stane says. He’s grinning with his teeth clenched, biting back a laugh. “We both know that’s not true.”

                He could have slapped her, open-handed, full on the face, and it would have shocked her less. It would have _stung_ less.

                “Go to hell,” she says, when she gets her breath back. “How _dare_ you--”

                “It’s not an accusation,” Stane tells her, like he thinks she’s going to fall for that. Like he thinks his money and his power and his straightforward stare are enough to let him get away with it. “I didn’t mean to offend. But you’re always going to mean more to Tony than he does to you.”

                May looks around. If she can find a tray or a table, she can put this glass down, and then she can box Obadiah Stane right here, right now, in this ridiculous gala, in this ridiculous dress. She’ll kick him right in the balls with her towering stiletto heels. She _will_.

                “May,” he says, and his tone is gentle. Not apologetic, but sympathetic. It’s discordant enough that it drags her eyes back onto his face. He grimaces, shakes his head. “If he meant as much to you as you do to him, the two of you would already be married.”

                And then he turns on his heels and leaves. Drops that on her and disappears, goes to shake hands and share stock tips while she stands there, blindsided, still not sure where the hell she’s supposed to put her glass.

                She considers just throwing the damn thing at the back of his cowardly head, but it seems like a tragic waste, and, anyway, the champagne never did anything to anybody. She downs it, looks across the room where Tony’s pasted a dazzling smile on his face, and then she sets off toward the open bar.

                She orders a vodka tonic, entreats the bartender to pour heavy, and she means to sip it slowly, buy herself some time, but a man swoops into the empty space next to her and decides to pick this moment, of all moments, to hit on her.

                Across the room, Tony’s surrounded by a pack of ravenous blondes.

                May misses Ben with a pain so sharp and cold and clear that if feels like she’s being filleted with frozen knives. She knocks back her drink and goes to the bathroom because she thinks maybe she’s going to start crying.

                But she doesn’t cry. She takes a series of deep breathes, fixes her eyeliner with the edges of her thumbs, and then she takes everything Obadiah said to her and presses it down, folds it over and over again, crushes it until it’s so small that it can’t hurt or change anything.

                And then she goes to get Tony.

 

\- - -

 

                There are open container laws in California, but nobody blinks an eye when May slides into the backseat with a glass in one hand and Tony’s collar held tight in the other.

                “Home, boss?” the driver asks. He is very politely not commenting on the flustered expression on Tony’s face or the icy one on May’s.

                “Um,” Tony says. He chances a glance at May. “Home?”

                “Yes,” May says. “Thank you.” And then she rolls the privacy window up and turns to stare at Tony.

                “So,” Tony says. He drums his fingers on his knees. “Didn’t like the party?”

                “Did you _honesty_ ,” May says, and she remembers that she had aspirations of subtlety, a whole plan of polite, refined attack. Those plans implode immediately. “Did you snort a line in the _bathroom_? Did you _really_? Christ, Tony! You aren’t that kind of rich asshole.”

                Tony hesitates. “Okay,” he says, a beat too late. “Now, Magpie--”

                “Don’t you call me that,” she says. She takes a heavy sip of her drink. It isn’t doing much for her nerves. “Don’t you call me that right now.”

                Tony grimaces. “I have responsibilities,” he says. “I have investors. I have to--”

                “ _You_ ,” May says, leveling an accusing finger right at his chest, “have an addictive personality, and you need to _not_ mess around with things like this. I don’t care what your board tells you. I don’t care what your investors tell you. I don’t care what Stane tells you. You aren’t their dancing pony, and they don’t own you. Take a night off if you’re tired. Take a _nap_.”

                “Wow,” Tony says. “You are really overreacting to this, May. Half the people at the party--”

                “Oh, _fuck_ half the people at that party!” She’s yelling, and she’s cursing, and she does both fairly regularly, but probably not usually with such shrill undertones. Tony goes wide-eyed and quiet, stares across at her like he’s suddenly realizing how upset she really is.

                “I don’t care about half the people at that party,” May says, forcing her tone back to reasonable levels. “I care about _you_.”

                Tony fidgets. He drops his eyes. He breathes out, and he looks sad and frustrated and confused. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just needed— look, sometimes, I can’t afford to be tired. Sometimes it’s a liability that has to be corrected. I have _responsibilities_. I have to---”

                “So ask for _help_ ,” she says. She reaches over and takes his hand, threads their fingers together, holds on. “I’m right here. I’ll--” She cuts herself off, because she almost said _I’ll do anything for you_ , but Stane’s in her head, and she can’t. “I love you,” she says, instead. “Don’t make me watch you poison yourself.”

                Tony’s whole face screws up, and he looks like he wants to argue the point. To him, it probably just seems like chemistry. His relationship with his brain has always been a bit uneasy, and veers occasionally into outright antagonism. She imagines it must seem incredibly appealing, the idea that he can just keep introducing substances until he finds one that makes his brain behave in more manageable ways.

                “Okay, Mayday,” he says. He keeps his hand in hers. He smiles, crooked and sweet. His eyes are still wrong, but less wrong than before. “Okay, I won’t.”

 

\- - -

 

                It’s late July, somehow, and May’s going over all the school pamphlets, reviewing her options again, when the front door slams open and Rhodey walks in angry.

                “Where is he?” he asks, and his tone is almost a bark. His shoulders are back, and his jaw is tight, and May hasn’t seen Rhodey look like that since the press published those pictures of her kissing Tony’s forehead after his parents’ funeral.

                May blinks at him. “Tony?” she asks, although she can’t imagine who else Rhodey would be looking for in Tony’s house.

                Rhodey makes a sharp, irritated gesture with his hands. “ _Yes_ ,” he says. “Yes, Tony. Where the hell is he?”

                May sets her stack of brochures aside. Rhodey and Tony fight, sometimes. They always have. But it’s usually either the cheerful, playful wrestling of puppies or the frustrated jostling of old friends. This looks like something else entirely. Rhodey looks _furious_.

                “What happened?” She climbs to her feet, leaves all the papers scattered across the side table as she goes to meet him in the foyer. “Why are you so angry? What did he do?”

                Rhodey takes several sharp steps away from her, like the magnetism that usually draws them together has suddenly flipped. Like he’s mad at her, too. “Is he at a party?”

                “No,” she says. There have been less and less of those. Tony somehow heard _don’t snort cocaine in bathrooms_ and translated it as _no more parties_. Maybe that’s for the best. They’re getting more work done now anyway. “He took Peter to the Griffith Observatory.”

                Rhodey makes a noise in the back of his throat, low and angry, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Great,” he says. “Excellent.”

                May hesitates. “Jim. What did he do?”

                The look Rhodey levels at her is grim and heavy and dark, but he still pauses, seems to weigh it out, as if he’s worried about the repercussions of telling her. She wonders which of them he’s trying to protect. “May,” he says, “what have you been working on with Tony?”

                May blinks at him. She blinks again. “Oh,” she says, because she can’t for the life of her track how what they’ve been working on would ever cause problems. “You remember the project I was working on at MIT before I left?”

                Rhodey’s whole body goes so tight that he almost seems to vibrate with it. “Yeah,” he says, jaw working like he’s chewing on metal. “I remember.”

                But he can’t. He must be misremembering, because May’s project is a _good_ thing. It’s good work. She and Tony, they’ve been doing important work.

                “It’s a visual prosthesis,” she says. “We changed the design a little. Moved the stimulator chip from the subretinal space to the primary visual cortex. And Tony had this idea for intracortical electrodes that--”

                “I know,” Rhodey says, voice so sharp and tight that it slices right through hers. “I know, because they want to put it in my fucking brain.”

                There’s a long, strange moment where May can’t think of anything at all. “In your brain?” she repeats. “But, Jim, you--”

                “Have 20/20 vision,” he says. “I know, May. Perfect vision by normal human standards. But did you ever stop to think that maybe a defense company wasn’t the ideal venue for new medical technology? Did you think about what Stane would do the second he got his hands on this? They make money by making _weapons_ , May.”

                But it’s not a weapon. It’s a prosthesis. It’s just a prosthesis. It’s no more a weapon than a cochlear implant is.

                “It’s to help people _see_ ,” she argues. “How do you weaponize helping people see?”

                Rhodey shakes his head. “They’re in the weapons business, May. And if they can’t make better weapons, they’ll make better soldiers.”

                “No one’s going to do that,” she says. She feels sick, suddenly. Seasick and far from shore. “No one’s going to cut into a healthy brain. They wouldn’t ever--”

                “They would,” Rhodey says. “Not yet. They want animal trials, and then human trials. And then, once it’s cleared, they want to put it in people like me.”

                “No,” May says. “Not _you_ , Jim. You’ve got—it’s for people who can’t _see_. Your eyes are fine, and your brain is fine, and we don’t know the long-term risks of this yet. Past projects have damaged brain tissue. This is supposed to _help_ people. It’s supposed to be for people who can’t--”

                “I know,” Rhodey says. His hand closes around her shoulder, tight and grounding. “May, I know what you were trying to do. But I warned you about working for SI. I told you it was dangerous.”

                “You sure as hell never told me _this_ ,” May says. She goes to shove him back, but she ends up clinging to him instead. “You said Howard would make money. You said _Stane_ would make money. You didn’t say anyone would be carving into a healthy brain to make better soldiers.”

                Rhodey sighs. He reels her in, wraps his arms around her. She presses her forehead into his shoulder and breathes.

                “Tony doesn’t know,” May says. “He can’t know. He _wouldn’t_.”

                Rhodey’s quiet for too long. Several terrible seconds of too long. In the end, he doesn’t say anything. Just breathes out and rests his chin on the top of her head.

                She remembers another thing Rhodey said, years ago, back at MIT. When he said he was joining the Air Force, when he warned her about working for SI.

                _I’d trust Tony with my firstborn, okay? I’d trust Tony to do the right thing, every time, so long as he stopped to think about it._

                _I don’t trust that Tony’s gonna keep his eyes on everything. He’s—c’mon, May. He’s easy to distract._

                At the time, it had seemed unfair. It had seemed like a monstrous misunderstanding of who Tony is, what he does.

                She’s starting to realize that maybe she’s always loved Tony too much to see him clearly.


	9. Chapter 9

                Tony and Peter barrel up out of the garage as a unit, laughing about some space joke that May could probably follow if she could concentrate on anything other than the replica astronaut helmet tucked under Peter’s arm or the rolled up poster in Tony’s hand. _They’re so happy_ , she thinks. They look so happy together. She focuses, forces herself to memorize the way those smiles look on their faces, the easy way they lope up the stairs together, jostling each other in a race that Tony always lets Peter win.

                “Aunt May!” Peter says, holding his astronaut helmet aloft. “I’m gonna go to space!”

                “Gonna need a pilot, kiddo,” Rhodey says. His voice is soft, careful. Tony’s eyes flick between the two of them, and his smile evaporates before Peter even makes it the five steps it takes to leap into Rhodey’s arms.

                “You’ll take me, right?” Peter says. He shoves the helmet on his head, and it’s a scramble, all those limbs, all that energy. “You’re a pilot.”

                “Course I’ll take you,” Rhodey says. And then, a second later, “C’mon, the grownups gotta have a grownup talk.”

                “I can talk grownup talk,” Peter says. His brow’s furrowed, although that’s hard to make out through the blue-tinted plastic of the helmet’s visor. “The astronomer at the observatory said I was smarter than his interns.”

                Rhodey laughs, and Peter’s probably still young to realize that it’s faked. “Kid,” he says, as he carries Peter away, “let me give you some advice about interns: if someone has bad interns, it’s because they’re a bad mentor.”

                “Hey,” Tony says, sounding vaguely offended. “Sometimes it really _is_ the interns.”

                “Wouldn’t be,” James says, casual and breezy, “if you knew more about responsibility.”

                “Ouch,” Tony says. But it’s pitched low, more a mutter than anything else, and he watches Rhodey and Peter in silence until they turn a corner a disappear. And then his eyes go to May. “This feels like an intervention. What’s going on, Mayday?”

                And May doesn’t have a real answer to that question. At least, she doesn’t have an answer she likes. She has some idea of the weight of this moment, the tectonic nature of it. She’s felt this before. This exact feeling. Like a wishbone, snapped in half.

                “Oh, Tony,” she says. She reaches up to rub at her eyes and then keeps her hand over them, just for a second. She doesn’t want to cry. It wouldn’t be fair. And anyway, she just made it to the point where she doesn’t cry every single day.

                “What is it?” Tony asks. He takes a step toward her and then falters. “It’s me, right? Something I did? Rhodey’s pissed, you’re disappointed. I know the looks, May. C’mon, just tell me what it is.”

                And how does she tell him? How is this even something she can accuse him of? She drops her hand away from her face, takes a deep breath. Her fingers wrap around the necklace Tony gave her after that week in Italy. Their last good time, she thinks. When they were young, and whole, and together.

                _You can’t keep anything_ , she thinks, frantic in her own head. _You can’t keep a single good thing._

                “May,” Tony says. She’s been conditioned to respond to that tone. That desperation, that fear. God, there was a time she would’ve done anything to help him out of any pit he fell into. And if she couldn’t lift him out, she would’ve crawled in there with him. It’s strange, finding herself on the lip of this pit, staring down. Her heart aches in her chest like it’s bruised, swelling against bone.

                “May,” Tony says, again, getting louder. “Christ. What is it? Did I back over a puppy? What the hell is going on?”

                “The prosthesis project,” she says, voice sharper than she planned. But the words had to fight their way out of her throat. She’s not surprised they sound like knives; they damn sure felt like them. “The prosthesis project, Tony, that we’ve been working on. That _I’ve_ been working on. My work. You took _my work_ , and you--”

                “Our work,” Tony says, and then waves it away. “Whatever. Irrelevant. What’s the problem, Mayday? What _about_ the project?”

                “You sold it to the _military_ , Tony? It was a medical project!”

                “I didn’t sell—what are you _talking_ about?”

                “Rhodey,” May says. “Rhodey knows about the project, because they want to do it to him, Tony. They want to give him one of our implants. _Rhodey_. Who has 20/20 vision, Tony. They want to cut into his brain and---”

                “It’s not even in animal trials yet,” Tony says. “It’s _years_ away from human trials. They’re not going to put anything in Rhodey’s head. He won’t be a pilot by the time it’s cleared for use in humans. He’ll--”

                “ _Stop_ ,” May says. And she doesn’t mean to yell. She doesn’t. But if she hears the rest of that sentence, she’s going to do something worse than yelling. “Don’t stand there and tell me that it’s okay because it won’t happen to _our_ friend. Is that your argument, Tony? Is that really what you want to say about this? Is that how you’re going to defend it? It’s not Rhodey, so it’s okay?”

                Tony takes a breath. He gives May a pained, pinched look. “May,” he says, “don’t be naïve.”

                Something cold and hateful shakes awake in May’s chest. “What the hell did you just say to me?” She doesn’t recognize her own voice. Someone else is speaking out of her mouth.

                “May,” he says, hands up, pacifying now, “listen--”

                “What,” she says, “ _the hell_ did you just say to me?”

                “You don’t understand what it’s like,” Tony says, defensive now, and frustrated. “I build weapons, May. That’s what I do. That’s what my family does. I build weapons so the bad guys die and the good guys don’t. It’s my job to make sure people like Rhodey come home.”

                “Is that your job, Tony?” May says. “Or is it your job to sell fear until no one can afford not to buy?”

                Tony’s jaw clenches. He closes his eyes for a second. “You aren’t being fair.”

                “ _Fuck_ fair,” she says. “And fuck you.”

                Tony’s face clouds over. When he straightens up like that, glares down at her like that, he looks just like his father. “You’re going to say that to me? In my house? After everything I’ve done? After I took--”

                “Fuck you,” she says, even louder, enunciating clearly, laboring over every syllable so he’s sure to hear them. “Friendship isn’t transactional, Tony. You took me in? Is that what you’re going to say? Because I’m not a bank you pay into.”

                “Really?” Tony says. “Because I’ve been paying for a hell of a lot recently.”

                And he has been. He’s been paying for everything. Everything she has here, everything Peter has. The food she eats, the clothes she wears. Her rent on the apartment back home.

                So it hurts, of course. Because it’s meant to. And it hurts more, because it’s true.

                Her fingers tighten around the necklace. She wants to rip it off her neck and throw it at him. She can feel all the threads between them, the spider-web of what they mean to each other, all their memories, stretched taunt, like razorwire against her skin.

                “I took you in, too, asshole,” she says.

                She sees him, just a kid. Just a kid in a borrowed Parker Automotive shirt, hiding at her dad’s garage for half a summer. She sees him, head down on his desk, an extra coffee waiting for her. She sees him, shaking in her arms after his parent’s death. She sees him, tires squealing as he peels into the church parking lot, throwing himself out of his still-running car, racing up the steps to get to Ben’s funeral on time, so he can help her carry the casket.

                “Hey,” Tony says, voice soft, eyes wide. “Hey, Magpie, I didn’t mean it.”

                The thing about Tony is that he never means it. He doesn’t mean the harm he causes. All the chaos, the noise, the recklessness, the carelessness. The way people get hurt. He doesn’t mean it.

                It doesn’t do any good to get angry with him. If he knew how to be a better person, he’d already be one. No one in the world could look at Tony’s intentions and find fault. The problem has always been in the execution of those intentions, in the maelstrom of his curiosity, the shortsighted nature of his instinct to ask _Can I?_ without ever pausing to think _Should I?_

                “I know you didn’t mean it, Tony,” May says. Her voice is gentle now. The fight’s over. Well, it never should have happened. It’s just that it hurts, and maybe May’s no better than any other animal. Cut deep enough, and she lashes out. “You never mean it.”

                What she’s realizing right now is that maybe she never means it, either. Maybe she hurts people, too. Maybe she’s hurting Tony.

                _If he meant as much to you as you do to him, the two of you would already be married._

                Obie’s voice, stuck on a loop in her head. And he’s not worth trusting. He’s probably the reason her work ended up in the hands of the military to begin with. But he’s not blind. And he’s not stupid.

                And then, in her own voice, _Is that your job, Tony? Or is it your job to sell fear until no one can afford not to buy?_

                Maybe they’re both just hurting each other.

                “May,” Tony says. He must be getting upset. His voice is choked-off, higher pitched than it ever gets these days. He sounds young. He sounds like he did years ago, before Ben, before his parents, before Richard.

                This isn’t Tony’s fault. It isn’t May’s either. It’s not Rhodey’s. There’s no one to blame among the three of them. They’ve been saying this to each other for years, framing the message, issuing warnings. It’s no one’s fault that no one listened.

                It bought them time. Maybe they needed it. She thinks, without Tony and Rhodey, maybe she wouldn’t have survived losing Ben.

                But they’ve said it. For years, they’ve said it.

                Rhodey first, of course. Because he’s the surest, the steadiest. The most steadfast. He’s always known where he was going. _I’m leaving. At the end of the semester, I’m graduating early. Joining the Air Force._

                _I’ve gotta find my own way._

                And then May, pulled out of the knot of their friendship, tugged away by an older loyalty. _I’m taking Peter. He needs me. **They** need me._

                _I’m choosing my **family**._

                And Tony, finally. He held on longer than any of them. But he was born into a role he couldn’t leave, a birthright that functioned like a leash. _I have responsibilities. I have investors._

                _It’s my job to make sure people like Rhodey come home._

                “If you don’t want your research used that way, I’ll pull it,” Tony says. His voice is rasping and strained. His eyes look red. She can see the pain on his face, and she remembers a time when she could draw it out of him. She thinks those days are over now. “But, May, you have to understand. If it can be done, it _will_ be. And if we tie our hands because we’re too noble to do it, it’s gonna be done _to_ us. And that means our pilots flying comparatively half-blind. Our people up there, half as good as the enemy.”

                She wonders if these are the moral questions Tony tortures himself with. She wonders if she’s looking at the way his mind draws and quarters him.

                “It’s gonna be on a volunteer basis, May. Opt-in only. No one’s going to be forced into this.”

                He sounds like he’s begging her for something. Forgiveness, maybe. She doesn’t know how to tell him he already has it.

                She forgave him minutes ago. She forgave him the second he looked like he thought she wouldn’t. She forgave him as soon as she saw the fear on his face.

                “No one’s going to opt out,” James says. And he doesn’t sound angry anymore. He sounds tired. He sounds the way he did years ago, after that first fight he had with Tony, back when he told them he was joining the Air Force.

                “They could,” Tony says, stubbornly. And then, a second later, he shakes his head. “But, fine. It’s done. I’ll pull it.”

                James sighs. He’s leaning against the wall, staring at Tony like maybe this _is_ some kind of intervention. May realizes, suddenly, that she never even told him about the cocaine. She’s not sure which of them she was protecting.

                That’s the problem with the three of them. They’re too close together to see the points of friction. It’s the way cancer forms. Your own cells, mutating, unseen. A part of you that turns to poison.

                Across the room, Tony’s starting to breathe like he’s been running. There’s misery stamping across his face, a flush spreading on his cheeks. His hands are twisting at his sides, reaching out, beseeching.

                It’s hard to look him in the eyes. She knows what she has to do.

                Stitched together like they are, it’s going to hurt.

                She thinks of bear traps. She thinks of cauterization. She thinks of Tony, the love in his eyes and the sincerity in his voice, the way he said, _You and Rhodes are the only ones who ever really wanted what’s best for me. Wanted me to be the best version of me. You made me want that, too._

                Whatever Obie thinks, there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for Tony. But above all the things she’d do, above every single sin she’d commit, above the journalists and frat boys she’d fight, above the shareholders she’d throw out and the investors whose phone calls she’d ignore, the oldest precept remains: _Protect him. Don’t let him hurt himself._

                If this happens again, he’ll lose her forever. And it’s going to happen again, because this is what Tony does.

                She squares her shoulders; she breathes in. She doesn’t look away from Tony’s face, but she lets herself lose focus a little, so she won’t have to see the way he flinches when she says, “We’re moving out.”

                “May,” he says, like she hit him. Like she _hurt_ him. And her will’s so weak that she closes her eyes, digs her fingernails into her palms, thinks of Ben and Rich and everyone she’s lost, to try to put this pain in perspective.

                “I have to,” she says. “Tony, I love you, but I have to.”

                There’s a long silence. When she opens her eyes, Tony’s pale, and there’s something in his eyes that looks like hate. But she’s known him long enough to know that’s just the way Tony looks, when someone who loves him hurts him more than he can stand.

                “Fine,” he says, tone clipped, hands still and dead at his side. “Fine, May. Fucking leave.”

                And then he does, before she can. No goodbye, no softening of the tense lines of his face. He turns, and he leaves, and she’s invisible, like the housekeeping, like the cooks.

                The breath she takes in over her teeth is an ugly, tortured thing. She’s shaking. She did this, she chose this, and she doesn’t understand why it hurts the way it does. She feels filleted open. She feels like she ripped her own heart out of her chest.

                “It’s okay,” Rhodey says, in the way people do when they know it isn’t. His arms are steady around her. He pulls her against him, and she leans in, holds on so hard it has to hurt. “It’s okay, May. I’ll help you pack.”

 

\- - -

 

                There’s more to pack than she expects. She doesn’t even have a car, so Rhodey rents a U-Haul for her, helps her load everything into boxes. Peter’s upset. He’s been crying off and on since she told him.

                She doesn’t have it in her to make Peter leave all the things Tony bought for him. She has no idea where she’s going to put the boxes and boxes of things Peter’s acquired. Maybe once she clears out all of Ben’s things, there will be enough room.

                “You want any of this?” Rhodey asks. He’s elbow-deep in one of her closets, trying to battle through the layers of gowns.

                “No,” May says. She doesn’t know what Tony will do with them. She’s taking some of what he bought for her. She doesn’t want to seem ungrateful. But she has no use for dresses like that, and someone who works for Tony will have better ideas of where to donate them.

                “Okay,” James says. “Thank God.”

                They’re running out of boxes. Tony’s always given her more than he should.

               

\- - -

 

                Tony stays down in his workshop all night and through the day afterwards. By five o’clock, May’s ready to leave, but Tony hasn’t surfaced yet to say goodbye. It’s his right, she thinks. He doesn’t have to see her if he doesn’t want to.

                “James,” she says, as they load the last of the boxes in the back of the van, “will you take Peter down to say goodbye to Tony?”

                Rhodey hesitates. The look he gives May is almost a grimace. “Yeah,” he says. “Let me do some recon first.”

                May translates that as _Let me make sure Tony’s not passed out drunk before I bring this impressionable kid down there to say goodbye to his hero._ She nods, chews on her lip, and studies the map she has spread out over the dashboard to keep herself from thinking about Tony and Peter, having to say goodbye.

                She’s still studying the map, planning the route, trying not to think about how much leave Rhodey’s taking, or whether he can really afford to help her move back the way he promised, when there’s a series of clattering footsteps and then Tony’s voice, loud and anxious, “May? May!”

                She drops the map, throws herself out of the driver’s seat, scrambles around the van until she sees him.

                He’s standing in his doorway, barefoot, hair standing on end from all the times he must’ve run his fingers through it. He’s messy and mussed, has creases on his face from the stitching on the couch downstairs. He looks almost panicked.

                “May!” he says, and he runs across gravel, and she’s moving faster than she’s thinking, and they meet halfway up his driveway, colliding together.

                “Tony,” she says, face pressed into his neck. It still surprises her sometimes, that he’s taller than she is now.

                He holds her so tight that he lifts her off her feet. “I’m sorry,” he says, into her hair. “If you have to leave, it’s okay. It’s okay, May.”

                She pulls back far enough to kiss his cheek. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” she says. She wishes they were still the same people they were back at MIT. She wishes they didn’t have the obligations they do now.

                She wishes she could spend her life here with Tony, building miracles together. She wishes she had either a will strong enough to keep her designs out of military hands or a heart strong enough to allow the necessity of violence.

                She doesn’t know how they came to be what they are now, where some small parts of them are toxic to each other. But the only thing she knows to do is quarantine and cauterize, sacrifice what she can stand to lose to save the greater whole.

                She’s the first to pull away, but Tony lets her go. And that, she thinks, flies in the face of everyone who says Tony’s reckless and stubborn and immature. That’s so much growth. He’s so much stronger than he used to be.

                “You’re my best friend,” she says, reaching down to grab his hand. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

                “You would have,” Tony says, with that blind devotion he gives away like it’s nothing. All that endless loyalty, and almost no one in his life to appreciate it.

                “Not without you,” she says. She squeezes his hand one more time and then she lets him go. Tony leans toward her, but he stays in place, keeps his chin up, feet planted, eyes on her. “Make me proud,” she says, as if he’s ever done anything else.

                “You, too, Mayday,” he says. He gives her a smile, small but real, and she concentrates on that, tries to ignore what she sees in his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

                She expects it to be a nightmare, moving back into the apartment she shared with Ben. She is braced for another marathon of misery. She expects to constantly walk into the ghost of her happier self, to be haunted by the memory of a better, sweeter life.

                She circumvents most of that sorrow by deciding to move out of the neighborhood two weeks after moving back in, after nearly getting into a fistfight with an old high school rival at the local deli. Lisa, always a meddler and, frankly, always something of an asshole, leans over the counter and coos to May about how sorry she feels and how appalling it is that Tony Stark took advantage of a grieving widow and then threw her out on her ass when he got bored.

                Shortly thereafter, when May’s demands for Lisa to come out from behind that counter and insult Tony to her face got loud enough to carry across the store, May’s cousin comes rushing up the aisle to interfere before any permanent damage is done.

                Leo probably would’ve let her have the fight, but Ollie, who hit a late growth spurt and is suddenly 6’2, physically lifts her off her feet and carries her out of the store. Which is just another reason why Leo will always be her favorite cousin.

                “The fuck happened to this neighborhood?” May demands, minutes later, prowling around Parker Automotive with a wrench in her hand while everybody other than Leo watches her with wary eyes. “Was everybody always an asshole, or did something happen to the water supply?”

                “I’ve been saying it,” Leo says. He’s buried in the guts of someone’s abused Ford, but he’s treating May’s rant like a particularly moving Sunday sermon. “ _Fluoride_ , they said. Bullshit. They’re definitely putting something weird in the water.”

                “Don’t these people _know_ me?” May says, turning on her father. She holds her hands up, beseeching, and belatedly acknowledges that the gesture would probably be more effective if she hadn’t been swinging that wrench around moments ago like she was bashing Lisa Jacobsen’s teeth out of her mouth. “Does everyone think I’ve been screwing Tony?”

                “ _May_ ,” May’s dad says, hands covering his face. “Do you have to use that language? Please. For God’s sake. Could we _not_?”

                “Screwing,” Uncle Tommy says. He looks vaguely nauseous. “Jesus Christ.”

                “I don’t think that,” Ollie says. He holds his hand up and everything. He’s been overly solicitous ever since he frog-marched her out of the deli. She’ll forgive him soon, but not quite yet.

                “I don’t have to deal with this,” May says. “I don’t have to live here, surrounded by these shitheads who won’t stop running their stupid mouths.”

                “Preach,” Leo says. He’s still hidden under the car, but he squirms around so he can stick one hand out, flashing her a thumbs up. “Fuck this place.”

                “Hey,” Uncle Tommy says. “This is our neighborhood.”

                “Oh, shut the hell up, Tommy,” May’s dad says, face still cradled in his hands. “It’s been shit our whole lives.”

                He lifts his head to look at May. When he smiles, there’s that same flash of pride she saw earlier, when Ollie hauled her into the garage and said, “She tried to fight Lisa! She threw an apple at her head.”

                “Alright, May,” her father says, “we’ll help you pack.”

 

\- - -

 

                Tony offers to help her find a place, but May can’t imagine that any of the real estate agents in Tony’s orbit would have the faintest idea how to help her find an affordable apartment. She ends up working with a woman whose sister used to date Leo. Samara knows Queens, and she knows May’s family, and she has a steely, casually cutthroat way about her that May finds alarming but undeniably helpful.

                May spends some of the money from Ben’s life insurance policy payout to get them into a good place. She’s been saving it for Peter, but Rhodey points out that Peter will, after all, be _living_ in this apartment, so it makes sense to use the money to ensure he’s near good schools and in a safe neighborhood.

                Her family helps her move and hosts a going away party. She’s staying in Queens, hardly moving across the country, but they fuss over her and Peter anyway. She lets them.

                She doesn’t sleep at all during that first night in her new place. Other than Peter, nobody in her apartment building even knows her name. She’s never felt anonymous in her hometown before.

                She meets her neighbors slowly, when they encounter each other in the hallways or down by the laundry machines in the basement. Peter makes friends with a girl who lives two floors up, and May gains a reputation around the building for being able to fix things faster – and better – than the super. If people recognize her, they keep it to themselves.

                Peter starts kindergarten in late August. There’s a strange silence when she comes home after dropping him off, a restlessness that has her wandering from room to room before she catches herself, straining to hear Peter in the apartment before she remembers he isn’t here. She job hunts idly, filling the time between her shifts at Parker Automotive and picking up Peter from school. She’s underqualified for everything she applies for, since she never did finish college, but she applies anyway.

                When she gets an interview for a bioengineering job, it’s almost a surprise. She doesn’t mention it to Tony until after she gets hired.

                “Mayday,” he says, “I cannot believe you, you traitor. You’re renting out your genius to some other company?”

                May laughs into the phone. “They’re a biomedical research company, Tony,” she says. “The ickiest engineering, remember? They’re not a competitor.”

                “Someday,” Tony says, almost wistful, “I’m going to buy up a medical conglomerate, and you’re going to come back to me.”

                May winces, wraps her fingers in the telephone cord. “Tony,” she says, hesitant.

                “I’m kidding, Magpie,” he says, although he sounds more rueful than amused. “When do I get to come visit?”

                “Anytime,” she says. She means it, too. She misses him. She misses Rhodey. She misses Ben, always, but the other two are people she can still have, however temporarily. “You’re always welcome here.”

                Tony hums. He sounds distracted. There’s a clattering in the background and then, “Two weeks, May. I’ll be by.”

                Two months later, in late November, Tony stops by. He makes a nuisance of himself, riles Peter up before bedtime, sleeps on the couch with one of Peter’s stuffed bears tucked securely to his chest. In the morning, he wrecks May’s kitchen attempting to make pancakes, and then takes them all out for breakfast at a diner before happily tagging along to drop Peter off at school. He walks May all the way up to her office, flirting shamelessly with the office administrator and two of May’s project partners on the way.

                “Pay this woman well,” he announces, as he’s leaving. “She’s the smartest lady I know.”

                “Yes, thank you,” Roger says, glaring blearily over the lip of his travel mug. Roger is May’s direct supervisor, a dark-haired middle-aged man who hides his gentle disposition and genuine concern for his employees behind the surly countenance of a human wolverine. “Next time you stop by to disrupt everything, consider bringing doughnuts. Or a muzzle.”

                Tony blows him a kiss that makes Roger aspirate coffee, and he’s still choking a full minute after Tony ducks out of the building, waving cheerfully over his shoulder as he disappears down the street.

                “I’m sorry about him,” May says, although the smile she can’t quite bite back probably doesn’t do much to add sincerity to her words. “He’s exuberant.”

                Roger rolls his eyes. There’s coffee staining the front of his shirt, and he grumbles, blotting the stain with a tissue he grabs off the still-giggling admin’s desk. “Well,” he says, tone heavy, expression beleaguered. “It’s nice to see you happy, Parker. I suppose he’s welcome to come back.”

                And then, still grumbling, Roger about-faces and marches into his office. May shares a smile with Mattie and then goes back to her desk to find that Tony’s somehow managed to sneak three separate candy bars into her pen holder.

                It’s a good day. She holds onto it. Tony’s eyes are bright and clear, and his smile is cheerful and open, and he still has some weight on his frame. He looks healthy. He looks happy. It’s the last time he looks either one for a very long time.

                 She catches glimpses of him spooling apart on news shows and magazine covers. She watches the angle of his cheekbones get sharper from one cover story to the next. His productivity builds higher and higher; the value of the SI stock she bought when Tony took over the company rockets up and up. But the health of SI and the health of Tony Stark seem inversely related, and her concerned voicemails pile up, while Tony’s return calls slow down, spread out.

                “Have you heard from him?” she asks Rhodey. They talk every week. They’ve talked at least once a week for years now.

                Rhodey sighs into the phone. “Sure,” he says. He sounds bitter, and tired. He sounds like that a lot these days when they talk about Tony. “Whenever SI and the Air Force have business to discuss.”

                “I’m worried about him,” she says.

                “I know,” Rhodey says. He doesn’t say _I am, too._ He doesn’t have to. She can hear it. “I think that’s just the nature of things, May. I think that’s what being friends with him means.”

                Being friends with Tony means a lot of things. It means having a safety net that, while sometimes inattentive, will never, ever falter. It means journalists still occasionally try to interview her when they want an insider’s opinion on Tony’s actions. It means she had to leave her neighborhood. It means, if her apartment burned down tomorrow afternoon, Tony’s plane would land in New York by midnight.

                It means scattered attention and a shower of presents. It means long silences followed by an overflowing of affection. Sometimes, it means trying like hell to love Tony more than he hates himself.

                “It used to be easier,” she says.

                “Yeah,” Rhodey says. “We used to be able to corner him.”

                There was a time, she thinks, when there wasn’t so much interference. When the world didn’t know what it had in Tony yet. When the people who wanted to use Tony didn’t outnumber the people who wanted to look after him a million to one.

                May can’t imagine she’ll ever abandon the fight, but it was a lot easier to save Tony from himself when it was her and Rhodey versus one frat boy instead of her and Rhodey versus the military, the economy, and every single person with a monetary investment in Tony Stark.

 

\- - -

 

                May doesn’t answer the loud knocking at her door. It’s three in the morning, ten months after Ben’s death, six months after she moved into her new apartment, and she’s trying to be braver, trying to walk after dark and let Peter sleep over at his friends’ places and remember, like Ben always said, that the overwhelming majority of people are good, safe people.

                But Ben is dead, and she can’t shake the thought that the majority is not overwhelming enough.  

                Then she hears the deadbolt click back and the door creak open, and she’s out of bed and running toward the door a second later. She might be a coward who hides in her bed from a stranger at her door in the night, but she is never going to let anyone get near Peter.

                She recognizes Tony two yards out, but she still tackles him straight into the wall, just for scaring the hell out of her.

                “God _damn_ it, Tony!” she hisses, shoving Tony against the entryway wall. “What are you _doing_?”

                “Got worried,” Tony says, oddly muffled. “You didn’t answer the door.”

                May blinks and pushes back, stares hard at Tony’s face. “Tony, are you drunk?”

                “Well,” he says, with a small, confused shrug, “yeah.”

                “Damn it, Tony,” she says. She steps away, running her hand through her hair. Her hands are shaking so hard they snarl her hair into knots, and she has to yank to get them free. “You can’t do this. Okay? You can’t do this.”

                “I’m sorry.” He sounds like he means it, but the problem with Tony has never been that he’s not sorry; it’s just that he’s never sorry enough to change.

                May grabs the lock picks out of his hand and throws them across the room. She remembers when they taught each other how to do that. She remembers cackling over the _MIT Guide to Lock Picking_ while breaking into labs at night.

                 “You broke into my _home_ , Tony,” she says. “In the middle of the night! While Peter is _asleep_.”

                “I’m sorry,” he says, again. “I took too much, I think. I just had to— Rhodey’s gone, and Jarvis is dead, and I needed— I knew you were close, May. I’m sorry.”

                “Took too much what?” May says. She grabs his chin and tugs his head down, stares hard into his eyes like she has the first fucking clue what to make of his pinpoint pupils. “What, you drank too much? Are you high _and_ drunk?”

                “I’m,” he wavers. “Well. Yeah, ‘s probably both.”

                May has to go to work in the morning. She needs to take Peter to school before that. She has to be awake again in less than four hours, and she doesn’t have time to deal with Tony Stark, drunk and high, standing in her entryway, looking like he’s about to cry.

                The anger burns up and hollows her out, and she’s left, empty and sad, holding Tony’s pale face in her trembling hands.

                “Tony,” she says, soft, mournful, “what am I going to do with you?”

                Tony swallows. She hears the click of his throat and the strangled noise that comes after. He pulls away from her, brings his hand up to his mouth, and, for a second, she thinks he’s about to throw up all over both of them.

                “Uncle Tony?”

                _Shit_ , May thinks, and whirls around to find Peter standing in his doorway, looking mussed and confused.

                “Uncle Tony?” Peter repeats and takes a few steps into the living room.

                “Hey, Petey!” Tony calls, sounding only a little choked. “How’s it going, kid?”

                “Back to bed, Peter,” May says, pointing sternly over Peter’s shoulder. Peter’s face falls, and May feels like the worst aunt in the world. “Tony came over because he’s feeling sick. I have to look after him. But, if you go back to bed now, maybe you can see him later, if he feels better in the morning.”

                Peter hesitates. He’s a smart kid, and May is endlessly proud of him, but it does make lying to him very difficult. “Okay,” he says, after a few seconds. “Goodnight, Uncle Tony.”

                “G’night, kid,” Tony says, with a jovial wave.

                As soon as Peter’s safely shut up in his room, May turns to her door. Behind her, Tony makes a soft, hurt noise. “C’mon, May,” he says, “don’t kick me out. Please? I’ll just sleep it off the couch. It’ll be fine. Don’t--”

                “I’m not kicking you out,” May says.

                She locks her door, then deadbolts it, and then turns around, fists her hand in Tony’s shirt, and drags him down the hall to her bedroom. She doesn’t let go until she’s pushed him into her bathroom and dropped him in an undignified heap in front of her toilet.

                “Let’s go,” she says. “I’m not twenty-one anymore. I can’t be up all night. Start the process.”

                “Oh, gross, May,” Tony says, with feeling. “I’m not going to puke with you watching.”

                “Like hell,” May says. “Just pretend we’re back in school. Remember pledge week, sophomore year? Remember how that kid from Missouri brought moonshine, and you didn’t believe it was real? Thought it was some mythical made-up thing, so you drank half a pint in one go, and _then_ you wanted to do tequila shots, but the limes had gone off, and we didn’t realize until--”

                Tony vomits, spectacularly. May rubs his shoulders. “Yeah,” she says, “there you go.”

                “You’re a monster,” Tony says, gasping.

                “Sure,” May agrees. She grabs a tissue off the counter and wipes the worst of the mess off his face. “Come on, sunshine. Keep going.”

 

\- - -

 

                An hour later, they’re curled together on the bathroom floor, with one of May’s towels wrapped around their shoulders. Tony’s carefully sipping his way through his second glass of water, and the worst of his weird twitching seems to have worn off. He’s sweat-soaked and shaky, and she can feel the knobs of his spine when she runs her hand up and down his back, soothing him the same way she soothes Peter sometimes, when he has a bad dream.

                “I’m sorry,” he says, for what has to be the hundredth time. “It was shitty to come here. I know that. I’m sorry.”

                It _was_ shitty to come here, but telling him that would be kicking a sick puppy while he’s down. She presses a kiss to the top of his sweaty head, instead.

                “I just—I wanted to see you.” He leans into her, and she tips her head so their foreheads rest together. “I miss you. And Rhodey. I miss you all the time. Remember, back at MIT? When it was the three of us? I miss that. Best years of my life, Magpie.”

                Those were good, fun, amazing years. She still remembers the way it had felt, careening from one discovery to another, chasing each other like comets caught in the same orbit, always laughing, always yelling, always a unit. There had been so much potential in them. They could have been anything.

                But they weren’t the best years of her life.

                It hurts that, for Tony, it never got better. She feels like she’s let him down, like she found an escape hatch to a better place and never bothered to reach back for him. It’s not her fault that he never found something or someone else. It’s not her fault that she did.

                 She pulls him close, rubs his back until he finally, _finally_ stops shaking. She doesn’t know what he took, but she hopes he never takes it again. Or at least, if she can’t have that, she hopes he doesn’t take nearly as much.

                “Come on, Tony,” she says, pulling him to his feet. “Time for bed.”

                She gets him out of his clothes and puts him in a pair of her sweatpants. They fit, which just makes her sad all over again. She wonders how much coke he’s doing, if he ever remembers to eat, if he’s slept at all in the past week.

                “I can,” Tony says, hollow-eyed and leaning hard to one side. He gestures toward the living room. “The couch.”

                “No,” she says, and she tucks him into her bed before walking around to climb into the other side. He looks at her a little wide-eyed and uncertain, drawn in like he thinks she’s going to make some kind of move on him, and she has to bury her face in a pillow and breathe for nearly a full minute.

                Ben used to tell her it was a good world with good people. She wishes all those good people had taken better care of him. She wishes they’d taken better care of Tony, too.

                “Go to sleep, Tony,” she says. She lies on her side, with her back to him. After a while, he rolls over and goes still. A little after that, she hears his breathing even out.

                She doesn’t sleep. She’s too worried he’ll choke in his sleep and die, right there beside her, without her even realizing.

                She took her eyes off Ben for a second, and then he was gone.

                She can’t watch Tony all the time. She has too many other responsibilities. Peter needs her. But she can watch him for one night. So she does.


	11. Chapter 11

                When May slips out of bed in the morning, Tony doesn’t move. She hovers over him for a long moment, heart in her throat, wondering if somehow, despite the sleepless night, Tony managed to choke and die beside her in silence. But he breathes out, sheets shifting minutely, and she goes to make coffee and stare out the kitchen window at the watery morning sunlight until the painful ache in her eyes dulls to something she can contain.

                With the assistance of everyday routine, the mindless guidance of muscle memory, she cooks breakfast and takes Peter to school. He’s grumpy. It’s not a surprise. He’s tired from his interrupted sleep, he’s worried about Tony, and he’s upset because he seems to know intuitively that Tony will be gone before comes home.

                He’s a sweet kid, but he’s still a kid. Emotional regulation is a learned skill with no set timeline. God knows plenty of the adults in May’s life still struggle with it.

                When May drops Peter off at school, he stomps away without a word. Not saying goodbye is a hell of a brushoff for a kid like Peter, who’s always constantly running some kind of complicated mortality athematic in his head. Once, after accidentally stepping on a crack in the sidewalk, he was rendered so inconsolable that the principal called May at work so she could assure Peter she hadn’t been immediately struck dead by his carelessness.

                Peter’s teacher gives her a wide-eyed look of alarm followed by of grimace of sympathy, and May rolls her eyes, smiles, pretends it doesn’t sting.

                She stands outside the school for several long minutes, idly wishing she smoked so she could buy herself some time, but eventually, with a kind of begrudging acquiescence, she makes herself walk to the payphone on the corner and call into work.

                “I need the morning,” she says, when Mattie forwards her call to Roger. “I’ll be in at noon.”

                “Is everything okay?” Roger asks. “Is Peter--”

                “Everything’s fine,” she says, before he can start trying to diagnose Peter’s imaginary illness.

                “Are you sure?” Roger asks. “You can take the day if you need to, May. If Peter’s sick---”

                “It’s not Peter,” she says. And she wants to tell him not to worry, wants to explain, but the truth is she’s ashamed, even if Tony doesn’t have the sense to be. She doesn’t want to say _Tony Stark’s sleeping off a binge at my apartment_ , because she doesn’t like what that implies about either one of them.

                “My cousin,” she says. “He’s having car trouble.”

                She remembers, a moment too late, that Roger has _met_ most of her family. And, even if he hadn’t, he knows she comes from a family of mechanics.

                But Roger just makes a thoughtful noise on the other end of the phone. “Okay, May,” he says, after a pause that runs just long enough to suggest he knows she’s lying. “We’ll see you at noon.”

                “Great,” she says, closing her eyes. It’s worse, somehow, that he’s being so nice. “Thanks, Roger. I’ll see you.” And then she hangs up, and breathes out, and doesn’t scream or start kicking the plastic walls of the phone booth, because it’s situated in clear view of the drop-off line, and she already hates the way most of the parents look at her.

                Because Peter’s so young, and she’s always alone. Because some of them recognize her from the tabloids. Because everyone knows too much or not enough about her. Because everyone thinks, just by looking, that they can see all there is to know.

                She walks to her car like a normal human being, living a normal life. When she slides into her car, she lets herself murmur a single quiet, forceful, “ _Fuck_.”

                And then she starts her car and drives out of the lot. Because she’s not a normal person, and she’s not living a normal life, but no one is, so what does it matter? Everyone’s just pretending. She can pretend, just like them.

                She picks up breakfast tacos and Pedialyte. She goes home.

                Tony’s sitting bleary-eyed at her kitchen table, drinking coffee on an empty stomach. Like he’s still sixteen years old.

                Everything she’s done, all the ways she tried to teach him to look after himself, and here he is anyway.

                “Jesus Christ, Tony,” she says. It won’t do any good to get mad at him. She knows that. It won’t do any good, and it might do considerable damage.

                At the same time, she’s only a person. She’s only a woman with a dead husband, raising the child of her dead brother, and one of her best friends in the whole world is poisoning himself for the fun and profit of other people, and sometimes she hates the world so much she just wants to wrap her hands around its throat and _shake_ it.

                “Sorry,” Tony says. He isn’t looking at her. His voice sounds terrible. He sounds like a man who was awake at ungodly hours of the morning last night, throwing up every last thing in his stomach. “I’m sorry, May.”

                May sighs and drops the Pedialyte on the table in front of him. “Drink that,” she says. “I’ll get the Advil.”

                Tony groans and rubs at his face, but one quick glance at May’s expression seems to quell whatever objections he was going to raise. He twists the cap off the bottle and takes a meek, hesitant sip while she goes to the kitchen and tries to be merciful about how much noise she makes, rattling through the pill bottles, searching for ibuprofen.

                Finally, when she feels reasonably in control, she comes back and drops the pills on the table in front of him. “Let’s start with two,” she says.

                He takes them dutifully, washing them down with more Pedialyte. “Look,” he says. His voice is soft and scratchy. It must hurt him to talk. It hurts her to listen. “That isn’t going to happen again.”

                And he’s right. It isn’t. It _can’t_.

                Peter loves him so much. Peter wants to be Tony when he grows up. And it’ll break Peter’s heart to lose him, but a clean break has a better chance of healing.

                May thinks about last night. She thinks about sitting on the floor of her bathroom, easing Tony’s sweaty hair off his forehead. She thinks about hearing someone breaking into her apartment in the middle of the night.

                She thinks about Peter, standing bleary-eyed outside his bedroom, asking about Tony.

                “May,” Tony says. And there’s an element of panic in his voice now. Like he’s beginning to realize he’s broken something. That reflexive fear you feel when something’s gone wrong, but the extent of the damage can’t yet be judged. That hanging moment, post-fall but pre-impact. “May, I’m not going to let that happen again.”

                “Tony,” she says. She reaches over and takes his coffee. It’s black, no milk, no sugar. He used to like sweet things. Well, so did she. “ _I’m_ not going to let that happen again.”

                He’s still for a second and then takes a breath. He looks tired. The bruises under his eyes are darker this morning than she’s ever seen them. No one’s looking after him anymore. Everyone left him.

                _She_ left him. And look what happened.

                It’s no one’s fault. People live the lives they have. In some other universe, she, and Rhodey, and Tony are still together, still working, still changing the world. In some other universe, they’re happier and healthier and together all the time. In that universe, they’ve never once shared a pew at a funeral or lifted a casket onto their shoulders.

                But in this universe, things played out differently.

                May thinks, nonsensically, of merry-go-rounds. Of the inevitable, invisible pull of centrifugal force. _You hold on until you can’t_ , she thinks. But it sounds like an excuse.

                “May,” Tony says. “What does that mean? It was one time. I had a bad night. You can’t---”

                “Stop.”

                He does. Goes still like a puppet with its strings cut.

                She’s so tired. She didn’t sleep at all. She wants to protect Tony, but she can’t protect him from his own bad decisions, his own unsteady mind, his limitless, unappeasable need to be exactly what everyone needs him to be. Not unless she’s with him all the time. And even then, even when she’s with him, she still can’t save him. She lived with him for months, and it wasn’t enough.

                She can’t do this. She’s not enough.

                “You’re my best friend,” she says. “You know that? Always. And I want to see you every day of my life. But, Tony, you can’t be around Peter unless you’re sober. Understand? No alcohol, no drugs. _Nothing_. And if you can’t do that, you can’t see him.”

                Tony flinches. “Jesus,” he says. “May, I’m not some kind of threat. I’m not going to hurt _Peter_ , for fuck’s--”

                “Stop it,” she says. It doesn’t work as well this time, so she just speaks over him. “You don’t have to hit someone to hurt them, Tony. You’re his _hero_. He loves you. He worships you. He told his entire class he wants to be you when he grows up. He gave a whole presentation. He dressed up like you on career day. You _can’t_ , Tony. You can’t do this to him.”

                Tony grimaces and rubs at his face, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I just wanted to see you,” he says. “It was a bad night, May. It’s not—things aren’t going well. It’s a lot, okay? It’s a lot to manage on my own.”

                “So hire an assistant,” she says. “JARVIS is amazing, but you need a _person_ , Tony. You need someone to run interference for you. You’re doing too much. You shouldn’t be alone all the time. You don’t—Tony, you don’t do well when you’re alone. You never have.”

                “I don’t want another person I _pay_ around me,” Tony says. “I hate it, May. I hate how they look at me. Is this supposed to be the rest of my fucking life? I don’t _want_ this.”

                “You don’t owe that company anything.” May sets the coffee up down. She leans forward, the edge of the table digging into her ribs. She needs him to hear this. “I don’t care if it has your name on it, Tony. You don’t owe it a damn thing. Sell it if you don’t want it. If the company’s making you act like this, get rid of it.”

                Tony looks up at her through his red-rimmed eyes. It’s an ugly look. Tortured. That company is the last thing his parents ever gave him. But Tony’s parents gave him plenty that she wishes they’d kept to themselves.

                “Act like _what_ , May?” he says. “The rest of us didn’t turn middle-aged overnight. This is what people _do_. This is what people our age--”

                May shoves back from the table. It hurts more than he means it to, probably. Tony almost never means to hurt anybody. It’s just that, around him, people tend to get hurt anyway.

                “Then go be with people your age,” she says. “Do whatever the hell you want, Tony. But if what you want is to be around me and Peter, you need to sober the fuck up.”

                And she knows, of course, what it means to say something like that. Her mother always told her not to issue ultimatums to the people you love. Because, by the time you get to issuing ultimatums, you’re admitting there’s nothing left to say. It’s a desperate play at a pyrrhic victory, setting fire to the battlefield in a fight you know you’re losing.

                What they are, what they mean to each other, it used to be a life preserver. It used to hold her up. She doesn’t know when it became this weight.

                Tony doesn’t finish his Pedialyte. He doesn’t even touch the breakfast tacos. When he stands up, he’s angry, but they love each other, despite everything, and so he’s just sad when he goes to leave. Resigned, like he expected this. Guilty.

                “Okay, Mayday,” he says.

                He’s so skinny when she pulls him into a hug. Her fingers catch on the bones of his spine. If she were better, stronger, or younger, maybe she could hold tight enough to press some of her strength into him. But whatever strength she has stays within the bounds of her skin. She can’t make him better. She can’t make him anything at all.

                “Just get better,” she tells him. “There are programs. You could--”

                “It’s not a _problem_ , May,” he says. He even rolls his eyes a little, a flash of that old exasperation. When she first met him, he didn’t know what to do with being looked after. And now he’s out of practice again.

                She steps back. She takes a breath. “You showed up at my house in the middle of the night. Drunk, and high, and sick. And that’s not a problem, Tony?”

                He shrugs, one-shouldered. He’s not looking her in the eyes. “It was a bad night. _One_ bad night.”

                It was the one bad night she saw. She wonders how many others there have been. The problem with leaving Tony in his own care is that he has never, not once, cared about himself.

                “Get an assistant,” she says. “Get people around you, Tony.”

                “Sure,” he says, with a smile. It’s a small smile, twisted up and ugly; it says _I used to have you._

                It’s not fair. It isn’t.

                But Tony’s a grown adult, and Peter’s a child. And maybe they both need her, but she’s already given Tony everything she can.

                She cries when he leaves. Hideous, wracking sobs that make her shake so hard she almost throws up the bitter coffee Tony made. She’s a _mess_. She can’t breathe. She sits on the floor of her own kitchen and cries until her eyes ache so much that she forces herself to stop.

                And then she gets up, clears the kitchen table, fixes her face, and goes to work.

                This is what happens, she thinks. This is the cost of growing up. You can’t take everyone with you. Some paths aren’t wide enough for everyone to walk.

 

\- - -

 

                Tony doesn’t come by again. He keeps saying that he means to. He makes vague plans. He calls every week, in the beginning. He talks to Peter all the time. But he doesn’t come back to the apartment again. And, after a while, those weekly phone calls become once a month, and then every other month, and then three or four times a year.

                It’s a strange thing, like that dissonant feeling after anesthetic. There’s a hazy numbness where there should be something real and warm and critical. Every time she thinks of Tony, she feels like she’s waiting for her body to remember how to hurt.

                But she’s busy, and Peter’s busy, and Rhodey comes around often enough that she almost feels like she isn’t missing anything at all.

                She sees Tony on magazine covers. Late night TV, and pop-culture commentary. People have all sorts of things to say about Tony Stark these days, and May does her best to hear as little of it as possible.

                He doesn’t ever seem to get better, but he learns, over time, how to keep things more under control. Or maybe that’s just the influence of his new assistant, Pepper Potts, who starts answering Tony’s phone calls six months after he last leaves her apartment.

                “Oh,” May says, “hi. I’m--”

                “May Parker,” she says. She sounds efficient. And excited. She sounds like she’s thrilled to hear from her. “Mr. Stark said, if you ever called, to interrupt him immediately.”

                “Oh,” May says. She feels something at that. A flash of guilt, maybe. She was only calling because Peter’s birthday is in a few weeks, and it’ll break his heart if he doesn’t get at least a card from Tony.

                “I’ve been trying to get him out of the lab all morning,” Pepper confides. “Thank you so much for calling. Here he is--- no, Mr. Stark, I’m completely within the pre-established rules. You told me to do this. Put down that welding torch. May Parker’s on the phone.”

                And after that, she speaks to Pepper more than she speaks to Tony. In fact, after three years slip by, she almost never speaks directly to Tony at all.

 

\- - -

               

                The Towers fall in early September. 9/11. There are no flights anywhere. Not even Tony Stark can get to New York. But he sends two SI employees to check on her, and they look pale and kind of shocky the way everyone in this city looks pale and shocky. She makes them coffee and sets a bottle of whiskey on the table, lets them make their own decisions about how much to pour in.

                “Nice of him,” she says. “To think of me. Sorry he dragged you into this. I’m sure you have people to check on.”

                The cell phone network has been overloaded for hours. The streets are a nightmare, and the subway is shut down, and she spent all day sifting through gossip, harvesting names. _Leo’s here, and he’s fine. No one’s seen Ollie. Your dad should be home by now. He should’ve been--- oh, there he is. He’s here. He’s okay._

                As far as she knows, no one in her family died today. She wants to be out looking for Ollie, but Peter’s at home, and she’s been trying to keep the worst of it from him. She moved the TV into her bedroom. The news won’t stop showing the bodies falling from the towers. She doesn’t want Peter to see that.

                “It’s okay,” the woman says. She’s older, steadier. There’s something in her eyes like resignation, and May wonders what the hell kind of life she’s had, where she can meet a day like this one with an expression on her face that says _Oh, it’s you again_. “It’s nice to be useful. And he was very worried about you.”

                “Tell him I’m fine,” she says. “We’re fine. Everyone—my cousin, Ollie. We don’t know where he is yet. But everyone else is fine.”

                “We’ll tell him,” she says. She finishes her coffee and then she stands up. She smiles, polite and kind. “Thank you for the coffee. Mr. Stark hopes to see you soon.”

                But they’re invading Afghanistan a month later, and Stark Industries is designing and manufacturing the weapons they take with them. Tony never makes it to her apartment. And she doesn’t see Rhodey very much anymore, either.

 

\- - -

 

                It’s just after 8:00am when Pepper calls. And 8:00am is 5:00am in California, so May’s heart is already in freefall when she answers.

                _It’s Tony_ , she thinks. And she knows that it is. She knows it. She can _feel_ it.

                For a second, there’s a terrible wrenching in her chest, like her heart is being ripped right out of her, veins snapping out of her skin like the roots of a tree. She swallows, and then she’s numb.

                “What?” she says, half-strangled. Her hands are clumsy; her fingers feel too big. She has to prop the phone between her chin and her shoulder to keep from dropping it. “Pep, what is—what’s—is he okay? What happened?”

                Pepper makes a soft noise into the phone. A breath, dragged in over her teeth. She sounds shaken, and scared. And Pepper Potts isn’t scared of anything.

                “Pepper,” May says. Her voice is firm and serious. It’s the voice she uses on Peter when he’s about to do something that could hurt him. “It’s okay. Take a breath, and tell me. Whatever it is, just tell me.”

                Pepper takes a breath. “It’s Tony,” she says. She never calls him that. Sweet, proper Pepper always calls him _Mr. Stark_. “They took him.”


	12. Chapter 12

                After she hangs up the phone, May moves the TV into her room. Peter watches from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table, toast hanging out of his mouth. “Do you--” he says, half-lifting out of his chair. “Aunt May? Do you need help?”

                “No,” she says. “Sit down, Peter. Just—just stay right there.”

                She heaves the TV onto her bed where it can’t do any harm and then takes a moment to catch her breath. She has her back braced against the door like Peter’s going to come charging and then--- what? See the news stories that aren’t running on a TV that isn’t plugged in?

                “May?” Peter’s voice is hard to read through the door. He sounds more confused than distressed.

                _He’s thirteen_ , she thinks. Thirteen. She tries to remember what she knew at thirteen, what she was ready to learn. How is she going to tell Peter? _What_ is she going to tell Peter?

                She’ll have to tell him something. She’s supposed to take him to school.

                _School_ , she thinks. All the newsstands they’ll pass on the way flash through her mind. She’s not sure about the turnaround, doesn’t know how much of the story has already leaked, can’t predict what’ll be on the cover of those newspapers.

                How is she going to protect Peter from this?

                From the newspapers, and the news anchors. From all the people on the street, who’ll be talking about the attack with that same invasive fascination they’ve had with Tony for over a decade now. Like they own him. Like his suffering isn’t real. Like nothing that happens to him really counts as tragic, because he’s rich, and handsome, and so very smart.

                Like he’s not fully human.

                But he is human. And he’s bleeding somewhere, right now. If he’s even still alive. If he hasn’t already bleed out or been butchered.

                He might be dead. Executed. Pepper warned her about that. In a carefully precise tone, with her voice gone tinsel-thin and fragile.

                “Sometimes,” she said, “depending on who has him--- sometimes they record the executions. For propaganda purposes. To ensure media attention. And Tony, he’s. It would be symbolic. It would be—every news station in the world would play as much of it as they could. It would be _everywhere_ , May. The footage would be everywhere.”

                May swallows back the bile rising in her throat. She closes her eyes. She thinks about Tony, and how scared he must be. She thinks about Rhodey, still unconscious. About how James will feel, when he wakes up and Tony’s gone. When he realizes Tony was taken on his watch.

                “Aunt May?” Peter calls again. He knocks gently on the door, and May flinches away, hands moving instinctively toward the television, like she’s going to block out a blank screen with her hands. “Are you okay?”

                There is no way to contain this. He’s going to find out.

                The story is going to leak out like blood, and stain all of them.

                “Peter, stay home,” May says. It feels cowardly, somehow, but necessary. She wants to bar the door. She wants to drag the bookshelves in front of the windows. She wants to block out the whole world and stay here until it’s all over.

                She wants Tony to come stumbling drunk through that door, and she wants to keep him here, where he’s safe.

                She can’t even remember the last thing she said to him, the last time they talked.

                _What if he’s already dead_? she thinks. But then, what if he isn’t?

                How could anyone hurt him? How could they?

                But Tony’s weapons have been hurting people for years. He’s been arming the troops that invaded that land, and so maybe it feels fair to them. Maybe they can justify it easily. Maybe killing Tony is a fast way to stop weapons shipments, and maybe filming it is a fast way to demoralize a people who might lose their stomach for war when they understand the cost of it.

                What if he’s scared? What if he needs her? What if he’s dead, and what if he’s not?

                “---stay home?” Peter’s knocking is less gentle now.  She thinks he’s been knocking and speaking for a while now. She can’t keep track. “May, what is it? Is it another terrorist attack? Are we okay? Do we need to go help? What’s--”

                She pulls the door open. Peter stares back at her, eyes wide, shoulders squared. He’s not Ben’s son. He’s not related to Ben by blood at all, but, somehow, he inherited his selfless courage. He has that same fire-rushing bravery, and, God, May wishes he didn’t. However selfish that makes her, she wishes he weren’t quite so brave.

                Ben believed in a good world with good people. And he bled to death alone on a dirty sidewalk.

                Tony thought he had to arm and armor every good soldier, and now he’s gone. Taken. And no one knows where he is, or what’s happening to him. They won’t know until the news breaks, and it could be a corpse or a video documenting the process of creating that corpse, and May is honestly, genuinely, definitely going to throw up.

                She makes it into the bathroom, but only barely. She loses her oatmeal and orange juice, and Peter tails after her, looking more and more upset.

                “Aunt May,” he says, “what is it? Is it Leo? Is it Uncle Jim? What _happened_? Why’d you move the TV?”

                May wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. She closes her eyes, breathes in, and then stands up and reaches for her mouthwash. Her hands are shaking so badly that she knocks the bottle into the sink. “ _Damn it_ ,” she says.

                She wants to scream. She doesn’t.

                “Woah,” Peter says. And then, moving slowly, he takes the mouthwash out of the sink, pops off the cap, and fills it up for her. “Here you go, Aunt May,” he says, as he holds the capful of mouthwash out to her.

                He’s thirteen. How the hell did he get to be thirteen? How the hell did any of them make it this far?

                God help her, she can’t go to another funeral. She can’t sit there with James and listen while people eulogize a man they ruined. She can’t do it.

                She will, if she has to. Of course she will.

                But she can’t.

                She tips the mouthwash into her mouth and swishes it around. She wishes it were whiskey. But if she starts drinking at 8:30am, she’s going to be unconscious before noon.

                “Peter,” she says, after she spits the mouthwash into the sink. He’s thirteen, and it’s time for him to learn. He has to know the cost of all that courage, how it feels to be the one left sitting in the pew. “There’s been an incident. There was an attack. In Afghanistan. Tony’s missing. Rhodey’s hurt, but he’s going to be okay.”

                Peter stares at her, open-mouthed. The horror in his eyes is hard to look that. That scared animal fear, the desperation. She never wanted to see it on his face. But this is what it is, this is what it’s like. That look on his face, she’s seen in the mirror. The price of heroism and war is death and grief and terror and heartbreak. And maybe it’s worth it. Maybe it’s necessary. But it’s a high price, and hard to pay.

                 “No,” he says. “That can’t—Uncle Tony? But why—he wasn’t in Afghanistan. Why would he be in Afghanistan? It’s—Aunt May, we’re _at war_. He’s not a soldier.”

                May bites her lip, tries to think of an answer. No, Tony’s not a soldier. He had no business being in a war zone, except that war _is_ his business. He’s a weapons manufacturer.

                And, in that second, the world shifts under her feet. She thinks about Tony, and the things he knows, the things he can build. Killing him would make a point, but it would only make it once. Making him build, though. Making him work.

                You could hold the world hostage with the weapons Tony builds.

                “Oh my God,” she says, softly, just to herself.

                And then, a second after that, her phone starts ringing.

 

\- - -

               

                She is no longer a primary source for news about Tony Stark. That title belongs to Pepper, with Rhodey and Stane filling out the second tier. But with Pepper and Stane running damage control for SI, and James only barely conscious in a hospital in Afghanistan, the press is desperate for comment, and they remember, almost simultaneously, that May Parker still exists.

                “Don’t answer the door,” May says. “Don’t answer the phone.” She drops the blinds, draws the curtains. “Don’t let anybody take your picture.”

                “Aunt May,” Peter says, “please sit down. Please? I’ll make you tea. I’ll make you anything you want.”

                She pulled the cable out of the phone jack in the wall an hour ago. Her cellphone is turned off. She asked the Benton brothers from upstairs to come lounge around her door looking intimidating, and, because they’re sweet boys who get a lot of free car repairs from her, they’ve kept the press away from her door since that first mid-morning rush.

                She’s afraid to turn on the TV, but she makes herself do it, every hour and half-hour. So far, none of the networks have anything more than what she heard from Pepper this morning.

                Tony Stark is gone. No one knows where. No one’s sure who has him.

                May cannot for the life of her understand how the caravan was ambushed in the first place. How could they be so careless? How could anyone even begin to know where to look for them?

                She paces and frets and makes Peter pack a bag. It doesn’t stop him from asking questions, but, from half an apartment away, it’s easier to pretend not to hear him.

                A little after eleven, there’s a ruckus in the hallway followed by her cousin Leo shouldering his way inside with a look like he’s one more invasive question away from racking up an assault charge or three.

                “Fuck’s _sake_ , May,” Leo says, “your whole building’s infested.”

                “Yeah,” May says, “thanks, Leo. Did you bring it?”

                Leo rolls his eyes and kicks the door shut, double-locking it behind him before he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a cellphone. “Of course I brought. Jesus. Who do you think I am?” He hands her the cellphone with a wry, worried look. “You’re absolutely the last cousin I expected to need a burner phone, May.”

                “Thanks,” she says. She shoves the phone in her pocket and then turns to look at Peter. He’s watching her with nervous, pleading eyes.

                “Aunt May,” he says. “Don’t send me away.”

                She winces. “Peter.”

                “I don’t want to go,” he says. “I want to stay with you. What if people try to get in here? What if something happens to Tony? I should be here. I should be with _you_.”

                She doesn’t know which choice is the right one. She doesn’t know if there _is_ a right choice. She doesn’t know how to balance the scales between the family she was born into and the one she made herself.

                She only knows that, right now, Tony and Rhodey need her, and Peter is in no immediate danger.

                And she knows that if she stays, the media will stay. If she keeps Peter with her, she’s going to subject him to the same scrutiny that helped force her and Tony apart.

                She pulls him in tight and kisses him on the forehead. He clings to her.

                “I have to go,” she says. “It’s going to be okay, Pete. I’ve got to figure out what’s going on. I’ll come back, I promise. As soon as I know what’s going on. You’ll be safe here. Leo and Grace are going to let you stay with them for a while.”

                “But what about _you_?” Peter asks. “Where are you going?”

                She swallows and steps back, forces herself to let him go. She has her Saint Albert medallion around her neck, and some clothes thrown into a bag. She called into work before she took the phone off the hook, and Roger told her to take the week, if she needed it.

                “I’m going to California,” she says. “I need to talk to Pepper.”

               

\- - -

 

                She calls Pepper on the phone Leo gave her before she gets on the plane. She doesn’t have much time. She bought a ticket for the first flight out, and it’s already boarding.

                “Pep,” she says, when Pepper picks up. “It’s me. It’s May. I’m flying to California. I’ll get a car in L.A. and then--”

                “May?” Pepper says. Her voice is very nearly shrill, and May stops in place, every muscle locking up. A businessman rams into the back of her and then apologizes, shuffling to the side.

                “What is it?” May asks. “Is he—did they find--”

                “No,” Pepper says. “No, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— it’s something else. It’s not about Tony. When does your flight land? We’ll send a—Obie, it’s May Parker. She’s flying out.”

                May breathes in, blinks stinging tears out of her eyes. She starts walking again, rushing toward her gate. “My flight’s boarding, Pepper. I need to--”

                “We’ll send a car,” Pepper says. “We’re sending a car. What’s your flight number?”

                May glances down at her ticket, recites the flight number as she sidesteps around a family of red-eyed travelers. “I can get my own car,” she says. “Really, Pepper. It’s fine. I just wanted to let you know I was heading out. I don’t need you to--”

                “May,” Obadiah says. His voice is gravely over the phone. He sounds tense, almost angry. Well, he’s known Tony since he was a child. God, this must be terrible for him. “We’re picking you up at the airport. We need to talk.”

                And they do. They absolutely do. May wants to know everything they know, and she wants to know it immediately. But she can get that information through Pepper. And she’d been hoping to avoid Obadiah as much as possible.

                “Hi, Obie,” May says, as she jogs up to the airline worker scanning tickets in front of the jet bridge. “How’re you holding up?”

                There’s a pause on the line, like that’s the last question Obie expected to hear. “It’s been a long day, May,” he says, finally. “How about you?”

                “Terrible,” May says, rushing down the jet bridge to join the very last of the boarding passengers. “Worried. _Confused_. How the hell do you _lose_ Tony Stark? What the fuck happened, Obie?”

                The flight attendant gives her a wide-eyed look, although it’s difficult to tell whether it’s the obscenities or the tone that’s alarmed her. May winces and waves an apology as she heads for the back of the plane, holding the phone between her ear and her shoulder and hugging her bag to her chest.

                “We don’t have all the information yet,” Obie says. “We can talk when you land.”

                “When I land?” May asks. “Are _you_ coming to pick me up? Obie, no offense, but I hope to God you have more important things to do than pick me up from the airport.”

                There’s a pause she can’t read. When his voice comes over the line again, it’s deeper and entirely too level. He sounds like a man who’s working very hard to keep his tone even. “Evidentially,” he says, “I do not.”

                May shoves her duffle bag into the overhead compartment and then drops into her aisle seat. She fumbles her seatbelt closed and pretends, just for a second, not to notice the series of gestures the flight attendant is making about her phone.

                “Obie,” she says, “what the hell does that mean?”

                “Have a safe flight, May,” Obie says. He sounds normal again. “We’ll see you soon.”

 

\- - -

 

                It’s a six-and-a-half-hour flight, with a three hour time difference, so May lands in LAX at 5:35pm, but it feels like 8:30pm to her. She missed lunch and dinner, and she drank too much terrible coffee on the flight, and she feels like still-twitching roadkill as she hauls herself off the plane.

                She follows the swarm off the plane, beelines for the nearest restaurant, grabs a sandwich, and eats it hunched over in terrible plastic chairs, hoping the food will settle her stomach.

                She calls Leo, who tells her Peter’s friend Ned stopped by after school with Peter’s homework. They’ve been stashed away in Leo’s guestroom all afternoon, allegedly working through that homework. May takes a second to wonder which LEGO set Ned manage to smuggle past Leo.

                “Anything to report?” Leo asks.

                “No,” May says. She holds the phone tighter than she probably should. She wishes Leo were here. She’s not sure what he could do to help her, really, but he’s a good guy to have around in a bad situation.

                Not that she’s in a bad situation. She’s getting picked up from the airport. Everything’s fine.

                “You okay, May?” And, to May, Leo sounds worried, but most people would probably mistake his tone for aggressive. Maybe that’s what happened with Obie’s voice earlier. Maybe Obadiah, like Leo, gets angry when the people he cares about are in danger. Maybe she just read that fear as rage.

                “I’m fine,” May says. She crumples up the sandwich wrapper, wipes her hands clean, and throws the whole mess in the trash. “Listen, Leo, I gotta go. Tell Peter I love him, okay? And tell him he doesn’t have to go to school tomorrow.”

                “Jesus, May,” Leo grumbles, “all those years you dragged me to school by my ears, and the kid gets a free pass?”

                “You were skipping to get high with Jessie Kowalski,” May says. “It’s a little different, Leo.”

                “You never appreciated good weed, May,” Leo says. “I feel like that’s on me. I feel like I failed you.”

                May huffs into the phone. She doesn’t smile, but she gets closer than she has all day. “Don’t corrupt Peter, Leo. I mean it.”

                “Fine, fine,” Leo says. “I love you, you buzzkill.”

                May rolls her eyes. “I love you too, you degenerate.”

                She hangs up and shoves the phone into her pocket, hefting her duffle bag onto her shoulder. She calls Pepper, and then goes to wait outside. They pick her up less than a minute later.

                After she hands her bag to the driver and climbs into the SUV, she finds Pepper up front, twisted around in her seat to give May a thin, worried smile. Obadiah’s in the backseat, and there’s something about the way he’s staring at her that makes May feel like she’s just stepped into a job interview she isn’t the least bit prepared for.

                “May,” Obadiah says, “how as your flight?”

                “Fine,” May says. She leans forward. “What’s going on? Why are _both_ of you here? I saw the stock drop. I’m surprised they even let you out of the building, Obie.”

                She doesn’t like the way Obadiah smiles at her.

                No, it’s not his smile. It’s his eyes. She doesn’t like the way he’s _looking_ at her.

                For no reason at all, her fingers curl around the door handle. She looks up, makes eye-contact with the driver in the rearview mirror. But he’s just a man, just a regular guy. Middle-aged and a little doughy, with tired eyes and a friendly smile.

                There’s no reason for her to feel the way she does. _Threatened_ , somehow. There’s no reason at all.

                “May,” Obadiah says, “did you know that Tony granted you power of attorney?”

                May stares at him. “Excuse me?”

                And there’s that smile again. That _look_ again. “Yes,” he says, while everything shifts around her, “it was a surprise to me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> For fic updates and more unusual AUs, follow me on [tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/).


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